


With Love, Jenna & Levi

by wordswithinmoments



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Compilation Page, F/M, OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:00:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29551071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithinmoments/pseuds/wordswithinmoments
Summary: Fic compilations for better access with a different/downloadable template! :D
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 11





	1. To The Hell We Face Tomorrow

There’s an unspoken agreement that comes with being a soldier, Levi thinks.

The first strength. To condition oneself; practicing discipline above anything, because the fact of the matter is that the rest simply follows. To comply with order; from superior to subordinate whether it be in the midst of battle or on the grounds within the walls.

Second is sacrifice.

Life, a fickle thing it truly has always been, yet it baffles him how people will still find the fire within themselves to fight for a cause they aren’t certain they’ll see through the end. To dangle yourself in front of death to save a life, is a sacrifice. Stripping his humanity in order to shed blood and wield his blood was—no, _is—_ a sacrifice.

Dedicating his heart for the humanity who took his _own_ is a sacrifice.

So it frustrates him every time when he sees that she can’t do the same.

Levi’s always known that underneath the armor, she only wore her skin. Scars that look just like scars to him, but apparently held stories to her. He told her he was insane then, but she never listened.

 _God,_ she never listened.

Jenna had always held everything that was grace, but still held the kind of will fire Levi always thought would burn him should he try. Being in the sidelines and loving her from there was enough; watching her bloom and walk barefoot in the world she laid herself vulnerable _bare_ for was enough.

Because love looked like that. A simple, fickle, _fleeting_ feeling within a world that knows more moments of pain than of relief. It looked like Jenna and her sun-lit hazel eyes, and sounded like her voice that reminded him that laughter and happiness could still be his.

-

And because he told her “Don’t die,” before they left at dawn for the walls, he thought that should have been enough.

He stood in front of her when daylight broke, blades drawn, and eyes steeled with a soldier’s resolve. At the sight of the battlefield, he forgets that he’s a man, who loves a woman with sunlight for eyes, and slips into the armor whose weight he’s carried for more than a decade of his life.

Jenna shivers, watching from the crowd.

There was something about today that had her skin feeling like it would break more than heal, but she supposes that it’s because today she must become a soldier. Hair tied back, because Levi’s always told her it would get in the way when she was at the peak of the climb, and because he’s her superior she listened.

His words ring in her ear, like always, because even though she’d always been jokes and teases outside of her armor, within the straps of this familiar weight— _this burden—_ she’d do all she can to protect life.

Life, as the fickle little thing she still could never understand. But still she fights.

“ _Don’t die,”_ Levi’s voice booms over the crowd.

He gives her a look she knows is _for_ her through the crowd and she shivers again.

Jenna listens to him explain the ins and outs of what’s expected to happen for this expedition. There’s a familiar hush that’s long settled through the crowd, and despite Levi’s voice maintaining its volume, it’s no question that he’s always heard.

She looks up at the sky, at the colors swirling with marmalade and just a few more touches of blue, and she thinks to herself that this must be the heaven’s way of mocking humanity. There’s still a sun, and a canvas called the sky that paints a unique masterpiece for the eyes to see every day.

 _“I see you,”_ it seems to call, and like always, Jenna’s beckoned with the promise of freedom beyond the walls.

Beyond the walls, that for now solely look like the chance of death coupled with the unknown. She thinks of the home she has to return to, and steels her gaze on Levi as he continues to speak, his eyes still focused on her.

“Dedicate your hearts,” he says, and with her head held high, back straightened, she then curls a fist over her chest and nods.

As she draws her blades, her body moving like muscle memory as she falls into formation, she casts one look at Levi who remains in his place located opposite from her and nods her head. _‘Today,’_ she thinks to herself, _‘ remember that you are a soldier. ‘_

-

Looking at death had always been a funny thing for her now that Jenna thinks about it. It’s at the height of battle, at the very peak of the rush before she allows gravity to take her and pull her into a fall where she remembers she’s human again.

She sees a soldier— _Eric,_ she thinks. Only having known him just barely enough to match a face to a name and nothing more, but his legs are under rubble and a titan’s coming and her brain blanks. Instinct takes over, like second nature, and instead of calculating the success rate if she _did_ take the risk like a soldier _should—_ like Levi’s drilled into her head time and time again—she’s fucking _human_ again.

Eric, she remembers when instead of clearing the area, she’s twisting her body midair and angling to rush towards him. _Eric,_ the name is clear in her head. He’s one of the younger ones, she remembers—joined the army for funds so his mother back home could get treated for her bad legs.

The wind feels like spikes against her cheeks and she squints, praying that her glasses won’t give up on her and crack with the pressure. She can see him now, and in him she sees fear.

 _Eric,_ she remembers, gritting her teeth as she braces herself for the landing. There’s a scream from behind her that barely registers in her head and she doesn’t know if it’s a scream to signify defeat or triumph. She blanks out again, right as her feet hit the ground, and she winces as she stumbles with the landing.

Eric’s screaming now, and _god,_ _why_ is it _now_ of all times that she’s thinking of his mother? She recalls hearing him talk about how he’d been meaning to make a trip back home to visit after this expedition, and her heart _sinks_ at the thought of a mother waiting for a son who won’t make it home.

(‘ _You’re too human,’_ Levi would always tell her, on the nights where he’d sit her down and list out her flaws.

 _‘Remember in war, there is always sacrifice,’_ he continued.

Jenna would nod her head because the truth is that she hears him every time.

 _‘There is always death,’_ Levi reminded her, and she knows the quiver that would slip from his voice is just from the fact that moments outside the battlefield are where he becomes human too.

Unfortunately for him, Jenna had always been the type to not listen to him when it counts.)

By now she _should_ already have a plan, but she doesn’t. The shot of adrenaline has Jenna feeling dizzy, but her movements are steady. In the moment, only thoughts that register in her head are to find a steady path to run to, and that’s it. Her eyes zero in on Eric, and when she sees fear— _a look that she **should** have been desensitized to by now—_her heart drops to her stomach.

It’s evident that his legs are crushed under the rubble and there wires are snapped from his gear. Jenna _knows_ that if she looked at the situation with more of an objective point of view, then this was a lost cause. Glancing around, she curses at the sight of the titan leaning down, arms outstretched, palms open.

A lost cause, she thinks. _This situation is a lost cause._

She can’t carry him even if she were to make it in time, and the ache in her leg is steadily increasing with every step.

A scream from the back, again, and this time the voice is _clearer._ She hears Levi, yell, but tears her gaze away from his general direction and wills herself to keep looking forward.

Inhale, exhale, and Jenna’s lungs are _burning._ Her limbs ache, and even if the blades she carries have always felt like the weighed next to nothing, the closer she approaches to the face she thinks _her_ death carries, they suddenly weigh down on her.

“Fall back!” Levi screams, then another, saying the same thing, that at the last second she realizes is probably Hanji’s.

There’s _still_ no plan that registers in her head, but adrenaline’s still pumping as she inches closer. Her lungs are burning now, the air she breathes in and out through her mouth sharp. There’s a dull throb from the side of her head she can’t pinpoint exactly where it came from, but she doesn’t think.

Eric screams as she leaps, her arms rising automatically, swinging the blades as the hand closes over.

-

The funny thing about watching how tragedy unfolds from an outside perspective is how much slower it actually looks.

Levi finds himself stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

Ever since he settled into the routine of this kind of life, and drilled in his head the definition of what it _means_ to be a soldier, all he’s done afterwards is practice the things he’s always tried to preach.

So it baffles him, in an _infuriating_ fucking way how it’s takes for something like _this_ to happen for him to finally understand her. He watches, from a vantage point, that frankly has him feeling like he’s world’s away from Janna, as she ditches rationality at the very last second and hurtles herself back into a battlefield that looks like the aftermath of death at this point.

He knows he doesn’t hate Eric, for getting his wire ripped off, resulting to half of his body being buried in rubble.

But the boy is screaming in the way he just _knows_ she can’t ignore, and Levi sees red.

There’s a certain helplessness, he realizes, that comes with being human. It’s an ugly emotion too. One that feels even more raw than love, because before acknowledging the fact that he’s distraught, he feels _helpless._

Levi watches her stumble as she lands, then run again.

Strands from the ponytail he reminded her to keep tight are falling out, whipping around her face, and his fingers twitch around the handle of his blade because he wants to _jump._

It’s Hanji’s voice that thunder over his, yelling her name, followed by a command he knows is pointless at this point, where he finally follows in her footsteps and ignores calculation and rationality, and jumps from the walls, rushing towards her.

The scenes that he sees from the peak of the climb, before the fall, move slow.

He watches her stumble, again, and his heart clenches. Jenna’s breaths move in and out, with a pace he can tell is ragged, and her eyes are wide as he sees her grit her teeth and push herself to cover the last bit of distance.

And _then_ what? Levi thinks. What happens after that?

Best case scenario he makes it in time and delivers the final blow to the nape, but she’s already in between the titan’s hands and from the looks of it her blades are past the point of being dull. He still hears himself scream, the words mangled at this point, and he’s seeing red.

He knows the _something_ that pumps in him is far greater than _just_ adrenaline, but he does it.

He’s screaming her name, just as she locks eyes with him for what he fears is a final time before a shadow looms over her and she’s ripped from his line of vision.

Blade pierces skin, then a scream rings the air, blood curling.

Levi can’t tell if it’s from Jenna or him.

-

Everything hurts, and she’s past the point of having control over herself. What comes to mind is the fact that she’s drifting, but she’s warm.

She smells linen— _Levi,_ she concludes, but tastes blood on her tongue and the ache from her head has now spread to the rest of her body. Jenna doesn’t exactly feel numb all over, because she feels her limbs drag beside her, heavy, when she tries to sit up.

“Stop,” a voice seems to say. It sounds far away.

She’s drifting, she thinks, so she struggles. Jenna fights the urge to sleep and wills her body to listen to the resolve she has in mind. And because nothing’s set in stone, the only thing she later becomes aware of is the feel of a warm palm settling on her forehead, lulling her back to sleep.

She’s drifting, she thinks again, and this time she’s certain.

But for somebody who does, a lot of thoughts seem to run through her mind. In the place in between being awake and asleep she suddenly is brought back home.

A house just on the outskirts of the central district within the walls, familiar enough to call home. A kitchen inside, where she spends her afternoons baking and exchanging light conversation with Levi.

Then _right,_ she thinks. _Levi._

‘He’d been screaming at me to fall back,’ she thinks to herself.

 _Levi,_ she thinks again, suddenly seeing the flashes of the gunmetal blue from his eyes. Jenna’s always heard of the things he says, quite frankly a subordinate’s rule in regards to their superior, but she had always been more than that. Always, _always_ had been more than a nod to the head, a “yes sir,” then her body would switch into autopilot for the sake of following directions.

“You need to stop being so stubborn,” she recalls him telling her once.

They were home too, she remembers. Lying in bed, covered in sheets that smelt _so_ much like fresh linen dried from the sun. Nights back home meant that the room they slept in would always be flooded by moonlight, but she feels warm.

Warm at the memory, Jenna thinks, thoughts hazy, and her body numb. Warm at the _touch—_ of the palm steady for a few moments, before they stutter when she tries to wake _again_ and only exhales a shaky breath at best.

Jenna knows she’s fading, but she still hears her name.

“I told you to _fall back,”_ the voice echoes. “Look at you.”

Why does the voice weep?

-

What Levi finally does is weep when Jenna finally opens her eyes.

Two, perfect hazel orbs fluttering open before they squint, struggling to see with the glare of the light. Pools of brown, illuminated into a fiery sort of hazel at the first sight of sun, and he’s suddenly so overwhelmed.

She lays still against his frame, and Levi holds his breath, careful so that he doesn’t jostle her.

When she comes about, the sight of the sky is the first thing that greets her.

“Has golden hour passed?” she asks, voice just barely there, her throat scratchy. It’s another one of those moments where she lets her thoughts drift, allowing for the emotions that the moment brings to come and linger just for a little while longer.

 _Freedom,_ Jenna thinks once more, must look something like this.

A sky that looks endless without the borders of the walls she’s known her whole life. A canvas without a frame; hues of marmalade and red in all the most beautiful shades like a painting in the sky, as the colors continue to swirl and bloom, bloom, _bloom._ The sun’s half past sunk beneath the horizon now, so she notes to herself that she must be looking at the western end of the world.

Levi’s hold tightens around her, and Jenna groans, feeling the ache that’s been present settle like weights on her shoulders.

“First you disobey a direct order,” Levi’s voice comes, where despite the foundation meant to sound like something akin to rage, she still smiles at because there’s a vulnerability she knows he only makes known to her.

She smells linen and home, so she exhales.

“Then you nearly _die_ on me,” he continues, his resolve to remain steady slowly crumbling.

Jenna’s eyes are still plastered towards the sky, where she chooses to remain silent as she settles with watching the clouds just steadily roll by. Despite the bark in Levi’s voice, she filters out the frustration laced along his words and lets it fade into the background.

All she knows is that in the moment, Levi smells and feels just like home.

She knows it’s not every day where she’s promised with the comfort that tomorrow is a day that _will_ come, and if it does every hour is an internal battle of fear. Will tomorrow bring hell or heaven? A moment of relief or tragedy?

She blanks.

“How dare you nearly die on me Jen?” she hears him whisper, his vulnerability made known as it seeped through his words. “You could have left me just like that.”

“The odds of you saving him were slim to _none—“_

“But slim is still a chance, right?” she retaliates, words spoken slow, as her eyes scan the bodies in front of her before they eventually land on Eric, lying on a stretcher looking a little more broken and bruised than usual.

“It is, but we _talked_ about this.”

“Eric made it, right?” Jenna asks, eyes still transfixed on the boy, a soft smile tugging at the corners of her lips, happy to know that he’s still alive.

“He did, but look at you,” Levi reasons.

Jenna shifts, craning her neck to peek at Levi who looks down on her with love clouding past the patience written in his eyes. “Eric can come home to his mother, Levi.”

“Her legs are bad so she hasn’t seen him in a while, and he gets to come home to her when he’s okay,” Jenna smiles.

“He _is_ here, but at the same time…I’m here too, right?” she says, and Levi’s struck with silence.

He supposes that she is right.

Today, the sky swirls with all the shades of marmalade and Jenna is here. He holds her in his arms, and there’s strands of her hair astray, slipping past the tie he remembers her tying extra tight because of what he said just this morning. She’s a little more bruised than usual, and her skin maybe broken again, but when she smiles at him he can’t help but soften because he knows she’s already begun to heal.

Today looks like this, and feels a little like he was dangling in front of a lifetime he knows he never would be ready diving into. To Levi, the rest of his lifetime looked like the home he shared with her, and smelt like the pastries she’d bake in autumn afternoons while he kept her company with a cup of tea and some conversation.

“You’re here,” he manages to choke out, because even if today also looked like a risk he would _never_ want to take again, it also holds the truth of Jenna’s words.

“I’m here,” she tell him again, and in his eyes she realizes that just with that Levi already looks like he’s brought back down to earth.

In the silence they share, she comes to a realization that even if she was, is, and will always be a soldier _then_ just a person, at the heart of it she is both. She fights _because_ she is human. Living with the uncertainty if she would even see a tomorrow is what every moment of her present holds.

So today, and right now, she allows herself the relief of knowing that a tomorrow will come.

Levi’s lips press against the skin on her forehead, and she sighs, because it’s a warmth that’s been familiar to her for so long now. Levi cradles her close to him, because even if he can’t guarantee every tomorrow after the next, he can at least hold her and try.

He tells her a silent _“I love you,”_ by the squeeze of his hands that thread through hers, and by the kiss he presses on her forehead, and it’s enough.

For a world that never seemed to give what felt like what they have is enough, this moment shared within the in between of what could have been life and death feels more than even the world.


	2. Love, In All Its Forms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, proposal fic

_And it always leads right back to her,_ Levi Ackerman thinks. 

To learn how to love within a world that knew no forgiveness nor mercy.

Love, not as that fickle, fleeting feeling that comes for a while before it eventually goes, but comes to conquer. To stay, to bloom, and to linger. Its footprints presented through the thoughts that come in his head and the rise and fall of his pulse at even just the sight of her.

 _Jenna_ , Levi thinks. It’s a fitting name for forever.

So take the definition of love. The feeling that comes and goes like the waves crashing on the shore; sometimes gentle, the tips just barely reaching your toes on the sand, and sometimes like a tidal wave. Where he’s swept, swept, _swept_ away from here to there, the very essence of control taken from him in an instant.

Where the first form of love, for both him and her at the very start of it all was expressed through the love for the self. Looking into the mirror and acknowledging that the fact the eyes that stare back at him in the reflection is of him, and not another. Levi Ackerman, the man who is a man despite being the soldier; and Jenna, as the woman who wields her blades all for the love of the world.

Because it’s the love for the self where they both discover that as cruel as the world may seem, it still offers kindness—scattered through the different forms of love.

And next is where Levi learns what it means to be in love.

Love, as the number two and not just one anymore. As sacrifice, and selflessness. Giving up his share of the kind of pastry that he enjoys because he sees that it’s Jenna’s favorite kind, and that she smiles just a little wider whenever she gets a taste of it. Waking up in the middle of the night and checking the space next to him, pulling up a blanket meant to cover two, tight and snug around her as he settles back in bed, a little colder than from before he stirred.

It’s love, Levi thinks, that wields the most beautiful power of all which is to redefine.

Because loving her moves like the tide. Overwhelming him, always, though he never feels helpless. In the center of the waves he tries to swim, but never against the current, because he finds that _his_ redefinition manifested itself in the form of an awakening that says he doesn’t mind the push of the waves that much.

It clings to him like the lull of a lullaby; a foreign, unfamiliar feeling that sends his heart racing, but he can never bring himself to mind.

When days like that hits, Levi finds himself a little ways past stuck.

There’s a face that comes with love, and where it looks just like her. His Jenna who becomes his morning, noon and night. Mornings, where he’d see not just the sky within the canvas of her eyes, but also be greeted by traces of the sun. Of the rays that peek through the curtains in his room, then flood into a room where half of it is him and of her.

Noon, where it’s watching her move around in a kitchen that often smells like pastries and home. A table too little for company that’s entertains more than four, but just enough space plus a little more for two. Two plates across each other, the smell of the food in the air, where he can pinpoint the taste before it’s even served, and the sight of her back turned to him, a ladle in her hand.

It’s oddly domestic, he thinks. But then again, in a world like this, moments of domesticity always served to be as comfort.

“I cooked this in the way you like it, Levi,” she often says, and something he knows is akin to love thrums in his chest.

“Can you try this out?” she’d say too, a spoonful of something he knows he’d like just by the looks of it in her hand, held out in front of him, where she’s looking at him like he gives her nothing but unbridled truth, where it has Levi falling in love again and again.

Then comes the nights. Some nights where they’d lie together with her back pressed to his chest, and she feels safe. Then others, where they’re lying face to face, the tips of their noses just barely touching, and Levi feels like he cradles the world right in his arms.

The truth is, Jenna has become more than just his world. She’s all the days of the weeks, every hour, minute and second, where despite all that she still is weaved in every little in between.

So it’s safe to say that love looks like that.

To Levi, it looks like a person. A girl who sometimes has jokes coupled with just the right amount of taunting for words, sunlit hazel orbs for eyes, and who wields the purest heart of gold.

 _His Jenna_ , he thinks.

His Jenna that he sees in every little thing that life has to offer.

Every cup of tea that she makes in the way he always thinks is perfect. Every piece of pastry that he never needs to buy now; displayed by the window of the bakery he passes by on the way home, because he knows that she could probably make better.

Love, redefined, from just the number one later into two, looks like every little detail that will always be home. Her jacket that’s thrown over the couch. Glasses on the bedside table before the both of them would sleep, next to the book Levi’s reread one too many times by now. The dishes in the sink that he washes, before passing off to the side for her to dry.

A system, well founded; routine, maintained.

Love in the little things, because it’s in those in between moments that always spoke to him the most.

-

The thought that perhaps he wants to marry her does not come to him as a spur of the moment thought. The way it happens comes slow. A trickling sense of, “ _oh I think I want to do this,”_ first coming to him as brief thoughts.

Thoughts that come in flashes, in scattered fragments over time, but ultimately remain with him the more he thinks about it.

Kind of like this morning.

It’s a Saturday off, and Hanji’s voice is the first thing that greets him in the morning. Out of all the places to be, he’s at the market, having been roped along with the eccentric brunette to get some of her grocery shopping done for the week.

“You know,” Hanji points out. “I really should have taken Jenna with me instead of you, she knows more about stuff like this than I’m assuming you do.”

“She needs a break,” Levi huffs, his thoughts drifting to Jenna who decided to extend her morning and sleep in for the day. “She doesn’t give herself enough time to rest, so she needs this.”

“Levi, you’ve grown soft,” Hanji retorts with a chortle.

The shorter man sighs, opting to maintain his silence instead of try to find a retaliation, knowing that he won’t exactly get to places if he tried to counter with arguments to shift the tide of the conversation back in his favor.

Though he supposes Hanji had a point. If he were to tell the truth, he admits to himself that he did like the fact that she used the word _grow_ instead of just _gone._ There was truth in that, at least. The more he thinks about Jenna, the more undeniable the fact becomes that as much as she has obviously grown in not just her skills as a soldier but just a person in general, he has too.

Maybe it’s the way his eyes linger at the fruit stalls he would usually walk past before her, or the way he seemed to not just look, but also address the world a little more kindly, but there _is_ change. There _is_ a certain kind of gentleness that came with the way he presents himself now.

A tenderness formerly unknown, but none the less still welcome.

Across the aisle, Hanji smiles.

If there was a look she could recognize from even more than a mile when it came to her closest friend, it was the look that gave away the fact that Levi’s more than in love. She smiles at the thought of her, and him together. Even though Levi had never been much of the vocal type when it came to letting his vulnerabilities be known, she still felt as if she knew him better than most.

“You know,” Hanji begins, making her way closer towards him and standing on his left. “I thought you would have proposed to her by now.”

She pauses, watching Levi with baited breath as he merely blinks at her question, then instead of responding directly, he settled with turning his shoulder and walking towards a shop they both passed just moments prior to this.

It’s a familiar tactic Levi’s known to do when confronted with more personal questions, Hanji notes, but she knows he doesn’t mind. Levi may not be the type to know what to say at every moment as quick as Jenna did, but she knows the things he says after giving it some thought are always next to practically perfect.

So she chooses to wait, falling into step with him, her pace matching his own.

“You’ve been together for a while now, huh?” she prompts, in hopes that she’d probe a little more than he usually lets on.

Levi smiles again, and Hanji snickers inwardly at the sight of a premature victory.

He wasn’t easy—never was, _truly,_ but she supposes that even the toughest will have their moments. The bits and pieces scattered throughout a person’s lifetime that has them looking at vulnerability in the face and scoffing as if to say it isn’t such a scary thing to conquer at all.

Hanji supposes that Jenna’s one of those pieces; she always did have a way with the usually more indifferent man.

“A few years and then some,” Levi mutters, more so as a passing comment just barely whispered under his breath, but Hanji still hears it.

“So what’s the plan?”

Levi pauses.

“What do you mean plan?”

Hanji guffaws, in an exaggerated tone that’s quick to draw attention towards the pair, which Levi quickly rolls his eyes at. “Plan,” she clarifies. “As in what’s next?”

“We’re happy with how things are.”

Hanji shrugs her shoulders, but gives him a pointed look that isn’t necessarily accusatory but more so just curious. “And you just want to leave it at that?”

Levi blanks, merely grunting, because he doesn’t think that he has an answer for her just yet.

-

He doesn’t mean it. The thought practically eats him alive.

The two of them were fine, _right?_ There had been an unspoken agreement of taking things slow, and where the both of them are currently at now with not just the status of their relationship but with their lives in general seemed to play out well.

Life and death constantly battling eachother in the balance that is the in between, and Levi finds himself stuck, his thoughts blank, head quite frankly—fucking empty.

Then it hits him.

The realization doesn’t strike him in the face, nor even so much as yell at him in the face. What it does is that it comes to him slow. Trickling like the waves that stretch as far as it could to the shore, because all it takes is a look in the right direction—towards a little shop tucked into a corner so small he was sure he’d miss it if he kept walking and blinked. Suddenly he’s transfixed, gunmetal blue eyes widening _just_ a teeny-tiny slice of a fraction.

From the sidelines, Hanji suppresses a smirk.

“Oi, Levi,” she calls, and he only cocks a head in her direction, not really looking like he’s even paying attention to her words. “I’ll catch up with you later, I’m gonna get a head start on the queue to the bakery. Just tell Jenna that I say hi if you can.”

Levi absentmindedly nods, waving her off with not so much of a thought in his head as he looks both ways, crossing the street right after the clear and making his way inside the store.

He thinks to himself that perhaps this is the moment that most of his peers usually talk about nowadays. The thing is, life for him didn’t exactly flow with a well maintained schedule. Everyday moved sort of like a surprise box, because he never knew what exactly would happen come daybreak.

It’s chaos, he thinks. Chaos in the form of dancing between the thin, _thin_ , **_thin_** , line of life and death, but it somehow feels right whenever Jenna’s there with him in the midst of all that swirling energy.

She navigated through the haze like the backwoods of her home. She was everything that he wasn’t, and so much more, but he supposes that it’s because of that where Levi finally learned what it means to look at love from a different angle and have that redefined in its own way too.

A compromise, of some sorts.

She teased him when he least expected it, and he felt more human since.

She’d blow on the spoon three more times after he said the temperature should be fine, but somehow it makes him feel loved when she insisted on making sure he wouldn’t burn himself on the tongue.

So he takes his time into looking at a ring. A simple band with a rock cut just decent enough where he’s sure that Jenna would like. The band gold, and he thinks to himself that this must be why it’s a metaphor for forever.

Levi was never much of a romantic, but he could be, he thinks.

For her. Always, always for her.

For a few moments, Levi lets his guards down, and allows himself the relief of imagining that he isn’t a soldier on the way home from a meeting about the next expedition outside the walls. He swallows down the bile threatening to climb up his throat and just _forgets._

His thoughts zero in on Jenna once again, as he stands in the middle of an old jewelry store, a strange peace wrapping around his being. There’s an old man by the counter, watching him with calculated eyes, but chooses not to break the silence.

He sees the scars that litter Levi’s arms, and the hardened eyes he could only recognize from those brave enough to lay down their lives in order to protect others.

Then he sees vulnerability. A shift in not just the atmosphere but in his eyes. Slow, almost tentative; an almost tangible dawning on Levi’s features as he walks slow, towards the little array of rings by the counter.

“Can I help you?” he hears, and he thinks to himself that it’s a little funny how rare he hears those words strung together, directed to him and not coming from him.

_Can I help you?_

Jenna always took the time to ask him that. Through the how are yous she scatters throughout their day, where they be in the heart of chaos or sitting at home, at five thirty PMs under the golden hour.

Love blooms in his heart—a feeling familiar, and always, _always_ welcome to him.

He looks at the simple band of gold, and thinks of forever. Forever, when in reality it’s just for the rest of this lifetime, though he thinks with her somehow immortalize their love to linger in many more lifetimes after this.

When he closes his eyes, he imagines what forever could possibly look like for a couple whose clock ticks just a little faster with every draw of the blade. Then he laughs; a small, barely audible snicker that sounds more like a soft exhale to the world.

But the world listens, because in this moment it chooses to be kind.

Like the old man watching Levi with patient eyes from behind the counter, the world simply holds its breath as it watches. The world outside fades, and Levi thinks of gold. Gold, as the metaphor for forever, and forever, always, as Jenna.

He smiles; not like a soldier whose body is littered in scars, but as a man in an old jeweler’s corner shop, thinking of his love as he looks at a ring.

“I’d like some help, actually,” Levi says, and in that quiet, little moment, the colors of the world bloom.

-

The plan had always been to ask Jenna under the kind of sky that he knows is her favorite.

Perhaps Hanji would be there. Petra, Armin, and Sasha maybe. They’d crack a few jokes, and he’d roll his eyes at their antics in the sentimental sort of way he knows they understand. There’d be sunlight at 5:30, shining just the way she loves the most, and all the colors would bloom in the most tender way when he kneels down on one knee and asks for the rest of her lifetime.

Then life happens.

A storm hits, and he finds himself spending the day—a day before the next expedition— sitting across her from the table.

There’s no marmalade in the sky—only streaks of grey and some touches of white at best, but the way she talks it’s as if there’s still sunlight.

He thinks she’s talking about something that happened at the house yesterday; a mundane, trivial task if anything really. He knows she’ll most likely forget about this story in an hour or two at most, but for some reason he knows he won’t.

Despite the thunder, the lightning, the wind, and the howl of the rain that falls in sheets instead of drops outside, he can still make out the sound of her voice over the noise. Much like what happened at the old man’s corner jewelry shop, the world behind and around this little house fades.

Levi listens to the slow tick of the clock on the wall, the _swoosh_ of the curtains he helped Jenna choose just yesterday, and the clink of her spoon against the plate. Her voice sounds soft with the rain, like a lullaby he thinks he’s heard before, but forgotten over time.

She speaks to him slow, then brightens when she recounts what he could guess is a happier moment in the story.

And like always, Levi watches—enchanted in the silence.

There’s no sun outside, and Hanji isn’t in the room with them to crack the jokes he planned on rolling his eyes to. Jenna’s seated across him, a slice of yesterday’s leftover cake on her plate, and a cup of cooling tea on the side. He watches her, his gaze lingering on her hand as she grabs a hold of the handle.

“This is good tea, by the way,” Jenna tells him, and Levi cracks a small grin, knowing full well that she’s only taken two sips at most and that the liquid inside has long cooled by now. Still, he keeps his attention on her, his gaze lingering on the skin of her ring finger.

He thinks of the box in his pockets, and the golden ring inside. The words from the old man just a few days ago still ring in his ear, and the smile he gave him afterwards served like a first push into asking for her forever.

Jenna’s beaming at him now. Wavy strands of her tousled hair falling over her shoulders, and her hazel eyes looking almost almond in the warm lighting of their little kitchen. Suddenly, his eyes catch the framed photographs from behind you, lining the wall. Memories immortalized into photographs; the fragments of times and moments that have passed kept as snapshots that hang on the wall like trophies.

Because he supposes that in more ways than one they were.

He’s here, he thinks. Jenna too. There’s death that must be paid after life, but for now they’re here.

Her hand is soft when he touches it, and her eyes hold the truth that he always needs to be reminded of every time he looks at her. The rain continues to pour, but they’re safe.

She’s safe; in the sweater she wears that smells like him, and inside a little kitchen of their house that’s half of him and half of her.

“Levi,” she calls, and it clicks.

The feeling, love, he thinks, comes this time again, and overwhelms him. It happens in the most beautiful way, because instead of a slow click that slides into place over time, the epiphany that strikes him in the moment happens like an audible _click._

It rings, and lingers, and his fingers slide into the pocket of his jeans as he holds onto the familiar contours of the box.

Jenna’s still staring at him, head tilted just a little to the side, a question in her eyes. “You okay?”

“What if,” Levi broaches, slowly, almost hesitantly. His heart thrums in his chest, but it feels right. There’s no sunlight in the sky nor laughter ringing in the air. There’s not a soul to witness this moment but him and her, and perhaps the heavens that peek through the curtains by the window, but this moment is his and hers, _alone._

“What if I asked you to marry me?” he continues.

Jenna pauses. Her eyes widen for a fraction of a second before they eventually soften, first at the sight of raw honesty in Levi’s eyes, then at the stillness the moment grants them.

“Would you actually ask?” she teases instead, lightening the situation, knowing that their dynamic worked best like this.

Levi’s fingers solidify their grip around the box, gently pulling it out of his pockets now. “What would you say?”

“Are you saying that you have a crush on me?” she laughs, eyes watering despite the tease, the tide suddenly lapping at her feet, bringing her along with Levi to flow with the current.

Love should have been terrifying, but the thing with Levi and Jenna was, instead of fighting against the waves, they always just seemed to flow with it.

So all it takes are a couple more jokes, some breathless whispers exchanged, and Levi finally pulling out the box and standing up to walk around the table towards her for Jenna to let herself feel the emotions that come. They show themselves through the tears that roll down her cheeks, and by the shaking of her hands.

Levi kneels in front of her, the box opened in his hand, and a hopeful look in his eye. He wishes for her to say her _yes,_ but instead of that, Jenna kneels along with him, cradling his face in between her hands as she looks at him in the eye and nods.

And love blooms, because it came in their lives with the intention to stay.

 _This,_ Levi thinks to himself, as he cups her face in between his hands, his thumbs wiping away the tears that roll down, _—must be the kind of love that people will fight wars for._

It’s the kind that has him stopping at a corner of a market and making conversation with a kind stranger, looking at rings instead of blades. The kind that has him kneeling down on one knee, asking for another’s lifetime and forever, sealed with just a gold band and a promise that runs deeper than even the King’s word.

Love, like this.

Like her.

Like crying at the thought of forever finally in his hands, the warmth of sunlight felt inside a room where a storm thunders outside.

(She always is enough.)


	3. To End, Then Start

Fear is a word that’s good to describe the situation.

It’s an ugly feeling, Levi decides. It’s the type to crawl up his throat, like bile, and halt his movements as any thought along the lines of rationality and presence blank in his head.

Jenna was—no, _is—_ always more stubborn in situations he wished she _wouldn’t_ be. She had a habit of saying yes, then turning around to do the exact opposite, and Levi should have _known_ that. A few battles ago it was running into the heat of the battle to aid a soldier whose legs were crushed in rubble.

He remembers the look of fear then.

Etched across her face as she kept _fucking_ running, at the boy’s who looked at the figure of death looming over his form that was rendered immobile in the moment, and at the reflection of his own face when he thought that was it.

The heavens were on his side then, because that _hadn’t_ been the case. By a random stroke of luck, Jenna had made it out alive, but just barely.

But for a soldier who knew no other reality but _this_ kind— _barely_ would always be more than enough.

When they’d leap and shoot the hook of their gear into a tree and it would hit the target just _barely,_ it meant they wouldn’t hurtle to the ground and die. When their blades would slash and hit the center of the nape just _barely,_ it meant one less titan to worry about and one more person saved.

Jenna should have _listened,_ but she didn’t. And because the world they live in is unkind, all it takes is for her to _barely_ lean a little more towards the window, to the right, plus a bullet that _barely_ just missed the wall for her to take the hit and black out.

-

Death has a funny look, Jenna thinks.

People say it’s a void, while others who thought to have gone through it and back out again just say that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. She thinks about what they say, because in reality everything happens all too fast. There was no slow motion scenario that she’d always read about in the books Levi has on his shelf back home, nor moment of stillness where her body and mind would finally be at peace and she’d just let the moment be.

She was screaming.

First at the barrage of bullets hitting the building, then at the new recruits she sees battered into fucking _bits_ on the other side of the building. There was about a couple feet of empty space in between the shelves where she’s taking refuge in, with Levi on the other side. There’s blood on his cheeks, and on hers, and she can see the way he winces when he has to shift and support his weight with his leg.

Her eyes widen in realization. It’s probably his knee again.

Another round of bullets come, and she ducks. Jenna hears a hiss, plus a few profanities yelled, before another blood curling scream coming from another room down the hall rings, and she bites her lip in frustration.

Helplessness is a word that _shouldn’t_ be foreign to her by now, because every situation frankly _never_ plays out how someone wishes for it to be. No matter the weight of the desperation, the reality of the situation has never been known to lie still and listen. If there’s such a thing as fate, and miracles, Jenna scoffs at the aspect of it.

For something as gentle as fate claims itself to be, she shouldn’t have to watch her comrades be battered to death with bullets and just _believe_ that it’s _okay_ because this was what was written in the books as their so called “fate.”

Another scream; a voice that she can recognize, and Jenna shuts her eyes close, _tight._ Moments like these are where more than anything, she wants to return back home and cover her ears and lay under the blanket with her knees to her chest, but she know that right now, she _can’t._

There’s a squad following her orders, hunched behind the crumbling foundation of the shelf beside her, ears open despite their bodies trembling in fear as they wait for her orders.

Another _fucking_ scream pierces the silence in the room, and Jenna stills. At this point every voice around her has mixed together to the point of it being just _one_ scream. She can’t pick apart who’s screaming from pain or just for the hell of it. On the other room, Hanji’s voice was booming out orders, followed by a gunshot, then a scream, then more and more and more and _more_ —until Jenna can only shake her head and try to steady herself as she focuses on handling what’s _here and now._

Orders, she thinks. _Orders._

Where in order to do that, you had to first assess the situation.

Across the room, Levi keeps his eyes on her. Gaze steeled like the sharp tips of his blade, he waits for her to pick up on his stare—which thankfully she does, and motions for her to breathe.

Inhale.

 _Good,_ Levi mouths. Jenna feels for the familiar rubber along the grip of her blade on one hand, then of a gun on the other. The trigger’s intact and the weight of the weapon is familiar on both hands.

Exhale.

Levi nods, again, then whips his head to the left and to the right as to motion for her to look at the situation.

A hush falls through the crowd that waits behind the shelves of an unknown building as the firing of bullet dies. Jenna breathes again, bites her lip, and looks at the squad huddled behind her and motions for them to hush with a finger pressed to her lip. Tentatively, they nod.

Voices from outside the building penetrate through the walls followed by the telltale sound of footsteps rushing in and out through the halls and corridors from around. Jenna’s blood turns cold. Levi clicks his tongue, frustrated at the way the situation seems to only fucking _worsen_ every other minute.

But still he tries. Running a hand through his face, he swipes at the blood and sweat caked on his forehead, annoyed at how filthy he feels in the moment. Eyes locked on Jenna’s form, he notices her still crouched in the exact same position as earlier, only this time her shoulders looked as if she’s trembling too. He curses, thoughts already running laps in his head, not helping with anything at all.

They need to get out of here, and that’s for sure. Hanji and Petra’s squad from the other room must have been okay by now, because there’s a dip in the noise level compared to the volume from the chaos just moments earlier. Quickly scanning the room, he begins to count. Three heads behind Jenna, but he doesn’t think she’s noticed that there’s already one man down under her command.

Levi keeps his silence; pointing it out to her right here, right now, would only do more harm than good. There’s four bodies lying face down in the empty space to his left, right by the toppled bookshelves they tried to barricade against the window much earlier as an attempt to keep the bullets coming in to an absolute minimum. Obviously it didn’t work out as well as they had hoped, and Levi sighs in frustration at the thought of four more graves to be dug back in Paradis.

 _Inhale_ , he reminds himself, so he does.

More footsteps echo through the halls, the slamming of the doors alternately opening and closing getting closer and closer with every minute that passes. He understands the language they speak, and the commands barked out, but he only recognizes one name out of the others.

 _Zeke,_ he hears, and he clenches his fists.

That had always been the name to the face he wishes to kill. After Erwin had looked at death in the face, served on a silver fucking platter by none other than Zeke Yeager in the flesh, all Levi wanted to bring him from then on was the very core of hell itself.

Hell, in the form of him. Two blades, a fair fight, and a resolution riding his shoulders until it’s carried out.

 _To hell and back,_ he’d promised himself. _To hell and fucking back._

Only this time, his focus is skewed.

The ache in his knee when he shifts his weight again snaps him out of his thoughts, and his eyes automatically lock on to Jenna’s form who still stares at him, her eyes wide.

This was where her humanity clouded her judgment as a soldier, and as a squad leader, Levi thinks. Her flaw that he always told her to work on, though never could drill into her head no matter how hard he tried to be persistent with it. She’d always only scoffed at him, waving her arm lightly; in her eyes, mirth, as always, because she believed in herself.

And Jenna had always been more than capable—Levi knew that much at least. She wasn’t in his ranks for nothing after all.

(Only she always had a knack of being more human than him in situations where she should be anything but.)

There was the devil’s blood in their DNA, Levi supposes. But Jenna trembles again, just _barely_ ; a light shaking of her fingers against the trigger of her gun, and the light slip of the frame in her glasses, but Levi _sees_ it. His eyes zero in on every little change that goes through her and he _sees_ everything.

Another door slams— _closer,_ and even he flinches along with her.

With his finger pressed to his lips, he signals for her to keep her silence, followed by the doing the same to the three behind her. Thankfully she relents, and he sees the way she switches into autopilot. The tremble in her form remains, but her eyes seemed to steel over. Jenna straightens her back and inhales once more, trying to push away the shakiness as she looks over the squad behind her, trying to wrack her brain for words to put to the orders she knows she just _doesn’t_ have yet.

Inhale, exhale. Assess the situation, form a plan, and move. And whatever you do, _don’t die,_ she reminds herself.

One look at Levi who presses his back against the shelves, the grip of the blade in his hand, and she wears the façade of brevity and holds her breath.

_Keep moving and don’t die._

And that _had_ been the case, until she turned and realized that instead of her counting up to four, there were only three.

Jenna’s brain blanks one second, then goes into overdrive the very next. Her breath stills, then hitches, the weight on her shoulders suddenly ten times _heavier_ , the situation she thought was manageable suddenly unbearable.

Before you are a soldier, you’re a human at the root of it all, she thinks to herself.

And _right—_ a _human._

Counting up to three when she should have reached four didn’t mean it was just one less number to worry about. It was _one less human_ that she couldn’t keep under her wing and _protect._ Her heart stills at the way she’s wracking her brain, trying to put a face or even just a _name_ to the number lost.

Louise, Jean, and Armin—they were there with her. Four bodies face down on the space behind the shelves, and her shoulders deflate because it’s a bullet to the head and lifeless eyes that stare back at her when she squints for a better look.

“Focus!” Levi hisses, and Jenna _tries—_ but it’s one less life on her shoulders and she can’t even remember the _name._

The faces of all that were lost are a blur in her head and she blanks even more. The trigger feels light in her hand there’s a fury in the pit of her gut she doesn’t recall was this intense. There was anger, and Jenna was more than sure of it. Her knuckles turned white at this point, with how tight her grip was against the grip of her weapons. Levi’s voice is registered in her head, and she hears him—she _swears_ she does, but she chooses not to listen.

_Inhale, exhale, and assess the situation._

_Keep counting to four instead of three because you’re still gonna count yourself as one of the ones who’s meant to get out of this hellhole alive,_ Jenna thinks to herself.

So much of her still trembles, and her shoulders ache along with her knees when she motions for the group behind her to get up. Levi hisses another order, one for her to stand down, but she ignores it. Jenna sees an opening from across the room. The door leading to the other room and ultimately towards an exit, but it’s right across the door that connects this room to the hallway outside. The doors from down the hall and around the room continue to open and close, voices booming along with the footsteps that race up and down the numerous flights of stairs she remembers is outside, and around the hall.

Unfamiliar voices continue to shout commands, so she supposes that she should too.

With her body still in overdrive, Jenna gives Levi a look and motions for him to look at the door she means as their exit. Thankfully, Levi’s quick to understand the motives behind her wordless communication and nods his head first at her, then to his squad behind him to follow her lead. Jenna tries to ignore the way four pairs of eyes follow Levi’s every movements. She knew he wasn’t called humanity’s strongest for no reason.

He could protect as well as he could fight, truly.

She breathes, counts to four once again, then adds one more number to pay tribute to the fifth that had fallen, and moves.

Then as if the whole world fell into one synchronized dance, the door _slams_ open, and a shout is heard. Commands from the soldier who caught Jenna and Levi’s squad in their hiding spot start screaming for the others to make their way into the room.

Levi curses, quick to move up and rush into the right side of the room despite Jenna’s scream for him to leave it be and _go_. With the kind of deadly precision she knew he always had, she watches with bated breath and rapt attention as he delivers a clean shot to the head, followed by slamming the door shut.

He yells at Jenna to run, and before he even rounds the corner, she’s already ushering her squad to make a break for it first, then at Levi’s as she joins Levi in making sure their backs are covered.

“Take the first left and jump out the window to the roof!” Levi yells, shoulder to shoulder with Jenna as they run through the halls. “Conserve your gas and look out for the airship!”

“You are _not_ deliberately engage in any combat if the shitheads keep coming!” Levi’s voice continues to boom. Beside him, Jenna shivers, her breaths coming in short pants as the exhaustion from her limbs begin to creep out, making their presence be known.

A chorus of _yes sirs_ echo through the halls, and Jenna counts the heads in front of her again.

“Whatever you do, don’t die!”

Jenna bites her tongue at the frustration threatening to spill over the lost life again. She still can’t put a face nor a name to the number lost, but she offers a prayer for the bodies left on the room instead. Four more graves to dig when they make it home. Four weeping mothers, and four tally marks during the next sit down and meeting when they make it.

 _If_ they make it.

-

And they do.

(Some.)

Before fully making it out of the window, the group finds themselves surrounded again. Levi’s calling her, his voice desperate as he watches with dread in the pit of his stomach as one of the younger ones— _Louise—_ trips midway, causing Jenna to stumble in her own momentum.

“ _Jenna, let’s go,”_ he hisses through his teeth, hand stretched out and eyes darting at the door from behind the room, knowing that the Marleyan soldiers would break through it in practically no time by now.

He supposes that this was one of the only moments he’s looked at death in the face and chose to be selfish. He knew that as their superior, he should be looking at things in a more objective manner, but at the sight of the softness in her eyes, Levi just _knows_ it’s not gonna take much for Jenna to break and use herself as sacrifice again.

Louise stumbles, and Levi watches as Jenna’s face pales at the realization that she probably broke her ankle.

“Just _go,”_ Jenna yells, lowering her gun in exchange of supporting her and Louise’s weight as she half drags his body to the window.

Escape was practically at the palms of their hands now, Levi thinks. The airship was making its way and from the looks of it Hanji and her squad were the ones in charge to protect it, making sure that no one would fire at their only chance of escape.

Levi breathes, eyes locked on Jenna. Desperation was in her movements, given away by the lilt of her voice when she begs for Louise to just _bear with it_ a little more, just until the window so she could use her gear to lift the both of them out of there.

 _Inhale, exhale, and calm your shit,_ the voice in Levi’s head reminds him. Look at the situation and make calculations.

He nods to himself.

There’s a door that’s further away from Jenna than his distance to him, and their escape, so _good._ There’s three bullets in his gun, so he can cover for them if someone gets in the door before they make their escape. Louise doesn’t weigh much, so Jenna can carry the both of them up the airship just fine. It’ll be a bit of a struggle probably, Levi winces. But as he watches Jenna suck in a breath, puff her cheeks, and drag out Louise again, he knows that struggle is a familiar face to her at this point.

-

Three bullets locked and loaded.

A door slams open, and gunshots begin to fire. Louise is the first to get hit before Levi responds to the situation. She yells, her legs buckling under her as the gunshot wound on her shoulder spreads pain like a rampant fire throughout her body. The sounds registering in Levi’s head is the fact that Jenna’s _yelling_ along with her; her voice in pain, and it takes him a while to realize that Jenna’s yelling _for_ Louise’s wounds not exactly for her own.

 _Her own,_ the thought comes back to him.

In a sudden, Levi sees red. Three bullets fired straight to the man behind the two— _thankfully only one man._ And it’s a bullet to his head, chest, and thigh. His form is quick to crumple under the assault, and just like that he’s dead within minutes.

Jenna winces, realizing that that must have been the case with count number five left in the room before this. As an attempt to placate the stain on her soul, as she hooks herself over the window, finger on the trigger of her gear as she’s pulled up along with Louise, Jenna looks at the body of the enemy and offers a silent prayer.

For peace, or for forgiveness, she can’t decide.

War is an ugly thing, she thinks. You look at death in the face and spit in it; thinking that you go out a martyr and a savior for those who aren’t fighting, when in reality death looks like a gunshot wound to the head from a man you haven’t even spoken to, and your body lying face down in an abandoned building.

As they make their way up, and rise to the airship, Jenna looks at the man a final time.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because the truth is, she knows that there’s a family waiting out there for a father or a son who won’t be returning home.

-

 _Home,_ as Paradis in the sense of a general word but really, it’s only Jenna for Levi.

She stares at him, bruised cheeks, split knuckles, and cuts on her face, but she’s smiling. She’s beaming, and Levi knows that it’s because they’re alive. They’ve made it and they’re alive but it’s just another _barely_ that will suffice for now.

—but it’s _barely_ until it isn’t.

Levi’s eyes widen as the first stray bullet flies past her, grazing her cheek just _barely_ and hits a stray pipe on the other side of the wall. Jean’s the first who springs into action, and Jenna takes two steps back.

It should have been _forward,_ Levi thinks. Two steps forward and she could have just _barely_ hit the mark that would have guaranteed her another life. But she doesn’t. It’s two steps back that she decides to take, the opposite of what he yells, and it’s a bullet straight to the chest.

And death, like _always,_ is a funny sight to behold.

Levi hears screaming; a blood curling, _aching_ scream that he doesn’t realize is his until Jenna’s fingers are alternating between tightening and loosening around his arm. She looks up at him, eyes quickly fading, and he curses himself because he _should_ have found atleast a piece of cloth to try to stop the bleeding. But she smiles; in her silly, little way that reminds him of the kind she’d give him when she tells him a silent _I love you,_ and the broken thing inside Levi breaks even more.

“It’s okay,” she says.

(It isn’t.)

Jenna feels her fingertips grow cold, and her chest is burning, burning, _burning._

Levi’s saying something now; something she can’t make out the words of, but she just knows that in the moment she’s drifting. So she holds him, her thumb on the back of his hand, rubbing slow circles because she knows that’s the kind that calms him down the most. And as he holds her, he lets himself break.

The reality of death is that it’s instant, but also it’s not. One second Jenna was here and home was still the next destination. She was two steps forward before two steps back, and now she has a bullet to the chest, and a ticking clock she knows she can’t get out of this time.

Levi crumbles. There’s no _time,_ he thinks, because death also looks like that. It doesn’t slow for the broken, nor pause for the sake of a possible goodbye. It comes and it _takes._ It leaves a million what ifs or could-have-beens, and leaves your mouth dry because words are impossible to form when time is _running out._

He wants to say something. Mumble _anything,_ even, but he doesn’t.

With his mind blank, he just holds her. Watches her. Hazel eyes, red cheeks, and the little freckles that dot across her cheek. His Jenna who is his world and his home. In this chaos of the world, mercy is rare, but he knows the sliver in time he was hers and she, his, that was already as beautiful as it was going to get.

(In this life.)

So he lets himself be, and breaks. Tears flowing like the blood that trickles before it pours. She breathes in, then out, her thumb slowing with the circles it continues to turn against the skin of Levi’s hand.

“In the next life,” she mumbles. “We’ll have time,” she exhales.

(And it’s her final one.)

“ _Will you be here when I wake?”_ she wanted to say, but couldn’t. Instead, all she sees is black, black and black, as she drifts.

-

In the world where he is still living, Levi shuts her eyes close, a kiss on her eyelids.

“In the next life,” he echoes, already more broken than healed. “I’ll fall in love with you again and again in the life after this.”


	4. Of Tulips and Home

When it came to finding the kind of home he wanted to settle in, Levi took the time in _really_ considering what he wanted.

Then he backtracks.

Reality is, it’s not just about what only _he_ wants this time around. Selflessness had always been a word that used to look like an “on-the-surface” sentiment for the man. Erwin, more than just a lifelong friend of his, had dubbed it as a façade every soldier always ends up wearing whether they were conscious of even putting on the mask on not. They fight battles because they are selfless. They draw their blades, slice some skin, shed some blood, and lay down their lives _because_ of selflessness.

But he supposes it can also be redefined into this. _This,_ meaning the little things that he’s coming to realize that he’s taken for granted more times than he can count, if he were to be honest with himself.

By now Levi’s well aware that the walls have already long fallen. Battles have been fought, lives have been lost, and compromises have been made that were both thought out long before the climax, while others executed in the highest peak of the battle.

Death, as the consequence of a war, is something that had always been known, and as the soldier that he is— _was—_ along with Jenna, they had been prepared to lay it all on the line from the moment they chose to dedicate their hearts for a final time.

And it _counted,_ Levi thinks.

 _Every sacrifice_ that led up to _this_ moment had all been worth it.

There are more scars in his body; others healed, while some are still healing. The surface level wounds that ache with every step, and the ones that let their presence be known through the weight on his shoulders and burden of the memories past will dull over time.

They remain, as memories _always_ do, but he knows a time will come where forgiveness wouldn’t be such a difficult word to sound out any longer, and he’ll find it in himself to forgive not just him—but the world too.

Because for now selflessness looks like the little things. The mundane; the dull choices he wouldn’t have given more than 2 bats of an eye six months ago.

Now, it looks like the keys in his hand, and a couple keychains laid out on the table for him to choose between. Paint swatches filed in a folder on one corner of the table, and the paperwork for the title of the house right next to it, the ink with Jenna’s signature and his still a little wet.

A house, he thinks.

A house with flowers in the front yard, and perhaps a vegetable garden in the back. For a second, Levi’s thoughts drift to his mother and thinks of what could have been. There could have been a meeting between her and Jenna. Tea in the afternoon and conversations exchanged over baking. A daughter that she’d fawn over, because he recalls her talking about how much she wanted a daughter of her own as he peeked at the better memories of his youth.

There could have been kindness, and love—as there always, _always_ is. But he thinks to himself that there’s a lot of unanswered what ifs that came with the world.

Levi never understood many things, and truth be told, _still_ is perplexed at most, but the things that count make sense. Beige walls over cerulean blue makes sense. A garden with red tulips and some blooms of roses over a patch of grass and daffodils makes sense too. Jenna’s signature scribbled next to his in perfect loops and swirls looks right too.

Her, sitting across him in a barely furnished kitchen at just a table with two chairs across the other feels like the “ _now”_ that people _always_ tell him to _live in,_ is finally happening.

Levi feels choked up.

Jenna glances his way, notices the stiffness of his shoulders, her eyes then trailing to the way the very tips of his fingers just _barely_ tremble, and she smiles. There’s patience that’s always cradled in a person—even to a soldier, because she supposes the world can spare them moments like these more often now.

No more blades to be drawn nor blood to be shed. When she will look out the window, she’ll see a sky and horizon. Endless and infinite, and _real._ There’s a breeze and a scent that’s a signature from the sea carried across the earth, where she knows that the waters won’t be too far from where they settle, and it’s _nice._

Watching Levi finally breathe and tremble and allow himself the luxury of even _hesitation_ has Jenna realizing that freedom looks like this _very moment._ All he’s always been were calculated movements and precision memorized to the _T._ Tough decisions, and instinct taking over before his mind could reel in the weight of the burden he knows he’ll have to carry afterwards.

Jenna knows Levi is exhausted, because truth be told, she is too.

Exhaustion like her shoulders slumping after a fight, legs buckling from underneath her as she lets gravity take control of her fall. Blood and dirt caked underneath her nails, the frame around her glasses cracked, and her resolve the only thing that still keeps her together to fight for _one more day._

(But one more day finally comes, and reveals a forever.)

It was one more fight against the world where humanity finally broke free from its fate. For the Eldians to find the peace they sought, and for the island of Paradis to become _truly_ just a paradise. No more walls nor bloodshed. Life that’s left at the hands of others, and death as the face that comes with fear every time a sword is drawn and the clock for one’s mortality begins ticking.

Right now it’s paint swatches on paper, the choice of which keychain he should use, and boxes to be unpacked stacked by the walls in the living room.

“This is our start isn’t it?” asked with a quiet, hesitant voice, because even if the both of them are considered to be humanity’s strongest pair, they’re still only human at the root of it all. Like a child holding out their hands, unsure if whether they deserve the candy offered to them or not, both Jenna and Levi stare at the keychains and set of keys set for them in the table. A decision others wouldn’t spend more than ten seconds in making, but to the both of them it feels like the world.

There’s a lightheartedness in making a choice that doesn’t involve life or death, and it’s _freeing._ Levi stares at his choices between one and two and tells himself that he deserves _this._ He deserves to sit in the kitchen of a house he just bought with the love of his life and think about the mundane. He deserves to furrow his brows and spend time on making dumb little decisions that won’t matter two or three days from now.

Jenna sits across him, the ring he bought her on her finger and ponders about the redefinition of the word “lifetime.”

Before the final battle, the rest of her lifetime had always just looked like a clock ticking down, never giving herself the mercy of looking for far in the future in fear that the hope for more may make her wish for dreams too selfish for a soldier.

 _Devote your hearts,_ they said, and so they did.

Jenna thinks of the comrades lost and closes her eyes, the words of a silent prayer mouthed on her lips and recited in mind. There’s a stillness in the world outside, and it lingers. The scent of the sea that the breeze carries lingers, and just like that the new meaning of Jenna’s lifetime is made clear to her.

It’s the rest of her lifetime, that’s meant to be shared with his. Two golden rings on his and her left hand’s fourth fingers, and a house by the sea that’s meant to become a home. Lifetime, meaning _forever_ because they can afford to dream of just that now.

“This is a start, Levi,” she says, in a soft, meek voice, because the taste of the world’s kindness is still unfamiliar to her in a way.

Levi looks at the keychains again, breathes deep, and points towards the left. Jenna smiles; it’s a cute little thing. A man holding a heart made of wood, and the paint chips around the corners, but she knows it was a gift given to Levi from a child that looked up to him like he was the world.

And in a way, Jenna smiles to herself because she knows that even if his gear was stashed in a closet, under a couple boxes meant to collect just dust—Levi would always carry the identity of a hero with him. As much as there were lives that were lost because of the war, there were also those that were saved because of a few man’s brevity.

“We still have to unpack the boxes, by the way,” she reminds him with a chuckle, even though she leans back on her seat and makes no move of getting up.

 _“We’ve got time,”_ Jenna thinks with a smile, because that’s the reality they live in now. There’s nothing _but_ time. Tomorrow’s a word that rolls easy off of her lips and the idea of next week works the same. She holds the keys to a house that’s meant for forever, and the photos that were kept in albums meant to be hidden will eventually be framed and hung on the walls.

She supposes it’s her and Levi’s own way of saying that whatever this is—they claim it. They claim the present; rooting themselves deep within it, and open their hands for the future they know will eventually be theirs when the years pass and the time comes. There’s love, not just for the self but for the world and everyone that’s come and gone, and stayed, because the love they realize is the truest is the kind that lingers.

Through the photos that are to be put in frames, the flowers that Levi will plant in the garden on the front for his mother, and the kitchen that will smell like the recipe of her bread that he can recall the taste of by heart.

And it’s so fulfilling.

Two keychains that look just like how they usually do, and aren’t a big deal to anyone else. And Levi _loves_ that. He realizes that he loves to make decisions whose effects wouldn’t exactly matter much but to him and him alone. He realizes he can be impulsive in the little things his thoughts settle in from now on, no longer needing to weigh one thing against the other, because everything will remain as is whether he decides to pick this keychain for his set of keys or that.

He can finally say that the both of them should go to town for dinner today and not think that perhaps this trip will be the last should they see their demise on the battlefield the next day. He can dance in the rain holding Jenna’s hand and not have to worry about how getting a fever would cloud his sense of judgement when it came to meetings with the higher ups.

The weight that’s been on his shoulders would always be with him, but he knows overtime they will dull. Much like what Jenna plans, he’ll remember the fallen through the photographs they’ll hang on the walls and honor them daily through every flower they plant in the soil of the earth that surrounds their house. They’ll start from seed, then grow from ground up; breaking through the surface and seeking the sun, much like they did every time they broke past the walls and reached for the heavens that is the sky—only this time they won’t die. Levi will water their roots and speak to them in gentle words as they bloom, because he’ll let their memory do just that.

-

“What do you remember the most about your mother?” Jenna asks, later that afternoon when they’re seated across each other on the floor of the living room, boxes on either sides of them, and an array of photographs scattered across the floor.

Levi pauses, eyes zeroing in on the one portrait he has of his late mother. Frayed edges, and some spots are beginning to form around the piece, but her face remains untouched. Gunmetal blue eyes in the exact same shade as his stare back at him, albeit a little softer.

“She made the most of everything,” he answers Jenna, trailing his eyes up to catch hers midway, the look in her eyes patient.

“She was patient too,” Levi added. “I know she would have loved you.”

Jenna smiles, thinking of the tulips planted in the yard and Levi’s hands, gentle around the petals despite the scars that litter the surface of his skin. “I would have loved her too,” she says, and Levi knows that that’s her truth.

The scattered photos tell the story of the time that’s passed, the memories within them already lived for the sake of being remembered. Levi glances at the faces that stare back at him, more frowns than smiles, but he supposes that’s one of the many consequences that war brings. War is the feeling that sticks; it gnaws at a person regardless of the setting and roots itself as the fear that’s hard to shake off.

“You did well,” Jenna tells him, though, and like always, the sentiment in her voice never fails to reach him. She’s always been honest, and Levi hears her every time. So he smiles, peeling his eyes away from the photographs of those who parted and looks to her instead.

Five thirty and the sky outside the window begins to swirl in colors. A kaleidoscope of all the shades of marmalade and scarlet like strokes of paint in the sky; perhaps a masterpiece from a creator that’s not of this world.

“We did well,” he tells her, and there’s nothing but unfiltered honesty in his words.

Where there’s not much of a reason for him to lie to her because for the first time in their lifetimes, there _isn’t_ a need to lie. When Levi tells her that he’s okay, he _means_ it. There’s no more badges to be picked up after a battle, nor remains to bury because that’s the past now.

“We did well,” said with a different kind of vulnerability in his voice and Jenna knows that it’s his most raw truth.

 _We did well,_ meant to be said in regards to all the battles they’ve fought whether it had been a loss or victory. _We did well,_ as the flowers planted in the garden and the soil of the earth he means to nurture for the rest of this lifetime. _We did well,_ he’ll say to the faces of the lost that will only live in the photographs he’ll hang on the walls of his home, because he means for their memory to stay, forever and always.

 _We did well,_ as Levi and Jenna’s truth that they’ll carry with them to kingdom come. Through the golden bands on their finger, a house that will become the forever kind of home, and the future they can walk towards without the fear of death.

“You know,” Jenna points out, placing the photographs on her lap and looking at Levi.

He stares at her, keeping his silence so she continues. He offers her a smile, the one that’s been coming to him so much easier now than before, and so she offers a smile of her own in return.

“You can be selfish now,” she tells him.

“So many have died in place of us so I think the only thing I’ve been doing is be selfish,” Levi chuckles, in his eyes a faraway look.

Jenna’s hand is quick to hold his, the warmth within always having been a familiar one to him, and Levi’s centered once more. The chaos threatening to overwhelm him through his thoughts cease to move, and he remembers that he’s home. He recalls that the only walls surrounding him are those within his home, and the world outside is for him and her to conquer.

 _Selfish,_ she says, and the word rings in his head, soft like the bells of the old church in the town center.

“Can we really be selfish?” Levi asks, still, because he doesn’t know the answer to a question he’s yearned to ask himself for so many years.

As a child, he’d wanted to ask for one more piece of bread, but he knew one was the only thing his mother could afford. He wanted to ask Kenny for a toy instead of a blade, but ultimately kept quiet because he knew ignorance and joy wasn’t a luxury he could wear well when he had nothing but callouses and scars on his hands.

Jenna watches him. The emotions in his eyes shifting from sadness to nostalgia. To bits of anger, and weariness. There’s still a tremble in the hands she holds, but she doesn’t mind. They’ve always been there, and she’s known that. She never told him she noticed, but rather, she just squeezed his hands a little tighter in hopes that it would heal the little something in him she knows has been broken for almost his whole life.

In its own, little way, it works, because when Levi looks at her, he always looks grateful.

There’s a _thank you_ constantly at the tips of his tongue when he looks at Jenna, but even without words, she always has her own way of hearing him.

“You can be selfish, Levi,” she says. “It’s okay.”

“You can ask for more bread at dinner, or even just tell me that you want something else to eat for the night if that’s what you feel like.”

Levi stills, but his thoughts don’t blank. All he hears is her. And her and her and her and her.

The world outside doesn’t dull nor the light, dim. The swirl of marmalade is familiar, and the swish of the curtains against the bare wood of the floor aid in the melody that is her voice as Jenna sounds her reassurance that from now on they’ll _always_ be okay.

“You can sleep in now,” she continues, closing her eyes and shifting closer, leaning her chin on his shoulder as she presses kiss after kiss on his cheek. “There’s no more morning call at 4am or papers to sign at 7. We can skip breakfast and eat lunch as the first meal of the day, and not make the bed right when we wake up.”

“Hanji can visit and you can finally laugh at the jokes that I know you never laughed at because you didn’t want things to hurt more if something happened to either of you.”

Levi huffs, turning away. “They weren’t that funny,” he mumbles.

“You know they were,” Jenna laughs, knowing him too well to believe the lie he breathes through his teeth as a last ditch resort to save face.

“But it’s okay,” she says. “We’re okay, and tomorrow we will too.”

“Five days from now we’ll probably still be opening boxes and trying to settle, but that’s fine,” she smiles sitting beside him shoulder to shoulder, and leaning her head on his. Levi softens at the touch, and they both face the window.

Skies like of marmalade and strings of gold are what paints the sunset, and there’s no more walls beyond the horizon. There’s a sea, and a town. People of every color and stories to be written, or rewritten for others. There’s a future beyond Paradis, but even so, they choose to stay at the very edge of their little island.

A home close to the sea, and a town some ways over. There’s a garden for his mother, and photographs for the departed on the walls. Jenna’s kitchen with an oven, and cupboards with flour and his and her’s favorite kind of tea.

(It’s home.)

Today, tomorrow, next week, and forever.

“Next month, Hanji will probably come over,” Levi chuckles, and Jenna hums in response.

“You’ll laugh at her jokes this time, I bet.”

Levi’s shoulders shake when he chuckles, and Jenna finds that unfiltered joy is a good look on him.

“Then five years from now,” she listens to him sound out, the lilt of his voice giving away that this kind of vulnerability was a little new to him still. But he tries, because he clears his throat and speaks again. “—five years from now we could have a family.”

Jenna looks at him, and smiles. “Is that why you picked a house with three extra rooms?”

“There’s a future now,” Levi answers.

Jenna presses a kiss on his cheek, her hands squeezing his. Levi squeezes back, and he thinks of the years that are sure to come. The redefinition of the word, “lifetime,” made clear to the both of them, because in the moment the rest of this lifetime feels like until forever and the eternity that’s still to come after that.

“We can open a tea shop too,” she comments.

“And a bakery,” Levi adds.

“Hanji and the squad will come, and the kids will love all her jokes.”

Levi snickers, his laugh not a foreign sound to her ears anymore. “If they’re anything like me they’ll probably react the same way.”

“But if that’s the case then even if they do, they’ll love her anyway,” Jenna points out with a soft laugh.

Levi hums his agreement, leaning into her touch. “We can do everything slowly now,” she says. “No need to rush anymore; we have time.”

“We do,” he nods, his voice fond. There’s nostalgia in the photographs and comfort in the atmosphere. He knows they’ll probably be scribbles on the walls; lingering for five years, ten years, and maybe even more than that. The flowers outside will continue to grow, the vines twisting throughout time, but the house will remain.

The sea nearby will continue to come by breeze, and there’s a kitchen inside for Jenna to bake as much as her heart truly pleases. He’ll sit on the patio and finish a puzzle, saving the best pieces for last, and write on the paper with slow strokes because there’s never a need to rush anymore.

Mercy, looking like the kindness of time, found in a home built by two, though through time, more will eventually come.

“Levi, this is life now,” she says, and he knows she means to add that this is the life they’re meant to live now.

(And it looks like everything he’s truly ever wanted.)

—and more.


	5. Until Infinity

Love _was_ like this.

It was fickle. Death was the consequence of brevity, and Jenna paid for it with her life as the offering served on a silver platter. A stray bullet that just _barely_ missed the mark, but it hit where it still _needed_ to be. (Where fate _needed_ for it to be.)

Life, put to a stop; minutes within home, and all the words they thought they had the rest of forever to say rendered useless. So many words of hope and life in the likes left unsaid, buried within the memories of a man who loved and lost—memories of her carried to the grave.

In the past life, Levi was a hero, while Jenna simply just died playing the role of a soldier.

Though in every sense, she _was_ just that. She fought when she needed to, drew her blades when the ones opposing their calls for peace left their pleas unheard, and was still human enough underneath the weight of that façade to say her I love yous with humility.

I love you, to the world, to freedom, to the skies, and most importantly—to him.

-

And as the reality that every soul has the burden to bear, life ends just like that. He realizes how fickle it actually is—where the truth is much clearer now that he’s seen it firsthand himself and not just heard about it. But still, he tells her, in his parting words that love will _always_ be her. In every sense of the word whether it be literal or meant to be understood in metaphors—in that life, the next, and all the ones after that, Jenna would infinitely be the face of love for Levi.

It wasn’t the emotion that overwhelmed him in the moment that made him announce that vow, even though she had been slipping, but it was because that was his truth. In that life, Levi loved. But it was also in that very same one, where he lost.

A loss that came too soon because before he could _truly_ know her, she was gone.

With just two steps too miscalculated, instinct rendered human instead of the trained soldier she was, a bullet came to meet her halfway—imbedding itself in her chest and bridging the past life and her current one, as she was taken in an instant.

Death, just like that.

The entire life she’s known—rendered to just a few scattered memories that would visit her in colors and dreams in the next life.

The words that were unsaid were left as what ifs. And for the rest of his life, they lingered. He saw Jenna in every window of every bakery, and in every stroke of marmalade in the sky. She was who lingered, and who stayed. The freedom that finally was theirs despite having a different look, and the name he whispers with every prayer.

Her words became one with the breeze, both her hellos and goodbyes, as she came as the sunset and sunrise of everyday.

It was love, but it was not life.

(And it was just _barely_ enough.)

-

Though it’s through repeatedly convincing himself in that life that _barely enough_ was _still_ enough that it got him through his years.

A life starts, just so it can end, and Levi’s life ended as quickly as hers, only with the absence of red. In his late years after her fall, he closed his eyes, as he faced the skies. Marmalade blooms, like it always did, and Jenna’s figure materializes behind his eyelids like a burst of light. Comforting, and present, instead of the black he expected to see when he would part from the world.

In his final moments, Levi wondered to himself if this was the same view she saw. If the numbness that slowly took him whole was the same she felt. If whether death for her worked like the slow blinking of your eyes moments before it would flutter and a person would drift off to sleep.

God, he _hoped_ she just felt like she slept.

Even as he fades, his fingers twitch at the memories of scarlet draining from her and the scratch of his throat as he calls out her name, praying that she’d hear his vow at least a final time.

“In the next life,” he remembers himself crying.

Then the light behind his eyes fade to black.

Because life is fickle like that. It starts, just to end. But even if there was an end written and inevitable in every lifetime, another start was bound to come.

Because the soul is infinite like that.

The soul is what remembers the memories that have been lived throughout each lifetime, keeping what was unanswered as the eternal questions it seeks to pose to a universe that truly offers nothing but silence and time.

In the next life, perhaps, Levi thinks.

Perhaps an answer will come, and they will finally stand in a world where time was _for_ them.

-

Where in a way, it was.

After the fall comes the feel of the ground. And Levi’s centered. The balls of his feet feel the touch of earth and it feels like _home._ When a breeze comes, he feels no need to whisper his secrets and pleas for another hello into it, praying that it would be delivered to a soul that had long passed before him.

Because now, in the present, life looks like _this._

It looks like a life that’s lived without fear.

Photos on the wall where the smiles come easier on both Levi and Jenna’s faces, their postures more candid than posed. Hands that are healed, and scars only coming from the slip of a knife or scrape of the knee from running too fast in their youth.

In this life, love comes with the certainty that it won’t just be a lesson. She becomes the baker next door to the teashop he’d opened up with the savings he’s put together years after teaching as an elementary school teacher for a group of children bearing familiar faces and names.

He remembers their story time, about how little Eren would run around and scare the others with tales of the titans he _swears_ he sees in his dreams. Little Historia with her crown and shy smiles, and Mikasa with the red scarf that she always loved to hold even though there wasn’t much of a story behind it anymore.

Children with eyes like they’ve seen through a history this world hasn’t witnessed, but only this time, in their hands were soft skin that held no blades nor scars.

The teashop down the street, that Levi loves with his whole heart, because it feels like a fulfilled wish from a life that never was kind enough to give him at least this. There’s a bakery across the little street, the place where he met Jenna—the only girl his heart was quick enough to recognize as _love_ straight from the get-go.

It wasn’t as much as saying there was only _something_ about her, because he knows that there was.

She looked radiant under skies of marmalade, where in the beginning Levi always felt to himself that they mean to tell more. He tells himself that perhaps he should listen, but later decides against it because the present is all that matters.

He’s always had a nagging feeling that there was something unanswered in his life that he’s here to find the answers for, but he shakes his head every time. Life, is the _now,_ and it’s meant to be lived. Happiness is something that meets him halfway and doesn’t need to be fought with blood sweat and tears for, so he leaves it as is, letting it be.

The _now_ is the teashop he opened, situated right across the bakery he meets the girl who later becomes the face and definition of love. Tea leaves whose names become more and more familiar to him as time passes, and the bell that jingles with a soft tone every time the door would open.

Five pms was when Jenna, he baker from across the street would come in and bring scones, plus a couple slices of cake. Levi would often think to himself that perhaps in a life that isn’t this, he wasn’t much of a person who favored sweets, but now the taste of caramel doesn’t seem so bad.

Five thirty would hit, and light would never cease to break through and spill into the room, and it’s _familiar._ He’s breathing every time, words caught in his throat before he could formulate words to try to get them out because Jenna is the name that feels like home every time he says it from his lips.

So it’s one day where he sounds it out.

 _“Jenna,”_ he tries, catching her attention.

She looks at him, eyes like she’s always been patient, but he sees a fire lit from behind that has Levi feel like he’s spinning. The color of marmalade bursts before it spills, then blooms, and he thinks to himself that perhaps this is the freedom the figments from his dreams always tell him to seek for.

And she smiles, the look in her eye timeless, movements practiced.

There’s a silence that’s more comfortable than anything inside the shop, where the sound of her voice blended with his harmonizes. Conversations light, topics never serious. Levi’s patient when he speaks because there’s never a need to feel like he’s rushing for something now.

Five fourty five and time moves slow, but it _moves,_ he thinks. People come and go in the shop, and he brews his tea in the same way he felt like he’s been doing for far longer than the years he’s lived in just this life. The taste of bread is like home, and Jenna’s quick to become the love that hangs around him like a fixture meant to be there.

She’s the centerpiece of the photograph, and not the blurred background character shuffled to the side.

Levi imagines home looks like this, and accepts it.

It’s later throughout the years where he thinks to himself that the life he lives now truly is a different kind of blessed.

-

And on the other side of that very same coin, life is like _this._

It’s a myriad of colors for Jenna.

Familiar shades of forest green, and gunmetal blue. Peach and marmalade, and the stain of scarlet like the blood from a wound instead of the color of life. All she knows is that she _is_ alive. She can breathe and look at the stars. The scars from her hand are from the slip of a knife when she cooks and the ones on her knees are the results of scraping them when she’d leap from high places in her childhood, thinking that she could fly.

There was always something about the idea of flight that intrigued her.

Often, she’d look at the clouds beyond her windowsill and think to herself that she’s traveled _through_ them before. Heights never scared her, nor did the concept of falling. When others would tremble at the sight of the ground getting farther and farther away from them, Jenna would simply shrug, climbing higher because she _thinks_ she’s been in altitudes much higher than this before.

Zipping through a highway at dizzying speeds was liberating. Raising your hands in rollercoasters and closing your eyes before it dips, then opening them right as she’d begin to fall was _familiar._ The feeling she’d get in the pit of her stomach felt like a nagging feeling like she’d done this before. It wasn’t as much as the thrill of the unknown, when a person lets fate hold life at the palm of its hands when their feet was above ground, but rather, it was just the familiarity of it all.

As much as she had always been grounded, she felt at home when she was with the skies.

Cloud watching and star gazing. Dreams of gunmetal blue that electrified her in the best ways possible. The idea of love, as a tragedy and a lesson instead of the fairytale the books from her youth would always try to convince her it is.

“It’s a sacrifice,” she told her mother when she was young, but Jenna’s mother would only shrug her shoulders, thinking that these are just words from a child too caught up in a daydream to live with the present.

And even though Jenna had always lived _with_ the present, constantly aware of the moment, she always did feel like she was thrusted back into the world instead of being born _in_ it. The skies called to her, and she flinches at the sound of a gun. Red meant a weeping source of life, as it drained, instead of the blood that pumped through a person for the sake of letting it _live._

In her adolescence her hands would just have this certain way of molding with the dough, as if this is a process she’s done over and over again despite her just now learning how to bake. She had dreams that came to her in flashes, only ever waking up with the memory of the emotion instead of the vivid faces she _swore_ she’d dream of every time. The faces that always looked the same—familiar.

A group of people who drew their blades and fought for life. The concept of freedom, skewed because after a victory they thought they held in their hands—in reality, it was another trial waiting to be fixed.

The burden she carried on her shoulders, in the dream at least, was heavy. Every time Jenna would wake again, there was a tightness in her chest that she could never explain, and she’s see flashes of red. The kind of red that poured. She was breathless, but tells herself that it was because of the nightmares.

The flashing dreams that she was always quick to set aside as just nightmares, instead of the memory they actually are.

Though even if the nightmares came, some nights more vivid than the last, there would always be the sight of gunmetal blue that served as comfort. The same shade every time too. The kind of blue that looked even more icy than the skies, but they were warm.

Jenna often would compare the shades of blue she’d stumble across on a daily basis, but she never did find the exact shade that she always saw in those dreams. Perhaps in that world blue meant warmth. Of power that surpassed even the greatest of monsters, but they were still _warm._

Blue like home.

—like love. (that she has yet to meet, but already feels tenfold every day.)

-

And it remains with her.

The love founded through the dreams stay, and even though they don’t shape much of how her life is lived in the present, tendrils of its impact linger.

And it’s funny, Jenna thinks. It’s years later where the dreams she once had finally began to manifest to what she meets in real life. The bakery she worked at had her feeling like she was meant to be there. A couple knicks of the knife left as little scars that littered her hands, but they _fit._ A smooth skin and unmarred hands felt unbecoming of her, so the sight of the little ridges of white across the canvas felt like cradling an old memory she’s never even lived through.

Levi comes to her midway, and it’s right.

It’s always under strokes of the sunset where the most beautiful would happen. He’s the shopkeeper across the street, who welcomed her and the pastries she’d bring every golden hour, and they’d talk.

In the beginnings like they’re old friends, but eventually turning into something more.

There’s a certain sort of gentleness that blankets the atmosphere ever since she was the first to walk across the street, ring the bell, and say hello. The wind chimes by the door move with the breeze, ruffling the very tips of her hair, and every time it does that Jenna’s always caught with the unshakable feeling that perhaps the wind carries a secret meant for her.

It’s always felt like that really.

There’s a connection she’s felt _with_ the world ever since she was young, and perhaps this is it. Where they were started with a hello, but it felt familiar. Like an old soul meeting a lifelong friend after decades, there was a relief in her shoulders lifted from a burden she hadn’t been aware she was carrying this whole time.

Their conversations flowed smooth, one word coming right after the other, the sentences prolonged and the hours of the day zipping by fast. Sunrise to sunset, the colors were in bloom, tenfold.

Then it was his perfect shade of gunmetal blue that would catch her off guard every time. Just like in the dreams, they were patient. Blue, in the dreams spoke of what love _was_ and what love _could_ be should she listen to the tales of her dreams.

And like the prince charming a little girl grows up reading about, Jenna always searched for hints of that _exact_ shade of blue at every chance of love.

It was more so a futile attempt, if anything. Until now. Until here; until this life where all she had to do was look across the street and say hello to the shopkeeper who held his mug a little funny.

Blue, in front of her was what made her say hello. Then the hello stayed. It found its way into the photographs on her phone and polaroids nestled in between the pages of the books he’d let her borrow from his impressive collection. She noticed that Levi wasn’t one to smile easy, but when he did, she always warmed at the thought that each of his smiles were honest. A kind of gentleness that was like home to her, the questions she never found the words to suddenly right there in front of her again, the answers cradled in the cup of tea she thought tasted nothing short of perfect.

-

Looking back at it, their youth looked _so_ much like what it _should_ have been.

For Levi, it wasn’t the underground nor a couple spoonfuls of soup as his daily meal at best. His childhood for this life became the home with wooden floors and yellow walls. There was a white picket fence in the yard surrounding his mother’s garden with the tulips that were always in full bloom. A constant source of food in the fridge, water in the faucet, and stories taught him love and life alike. Happiness came to him, and even though he had always been more of a person that was on the reserved side, he was more open to accepting the world’s kindness this time around.

This life wasn’t easy—because the nature of life was to _never_ be easy, but Levi found happiness midway this time.

He found that he laughed when he wanted, then cried when he did.

He loved to drink tea and sit in bakeries instead of coffee shops, and loved children even though he sometimes scowled. Graduation at elementary, high school, then college came and went, where the people he celebrated his victories with always felt more than just the nagging sense of _familiar._

There was Erwin, the valedictorian, who spoke to him like he held the truth and honor on his shoulders like it was his burden alone to carry. Hanji, who sat next to him in labs and had a love for the little intricacies of the world. Petra, who planted trees on the school campus and loved the earth like her soul would forever be a part of it.

Familiar, Levi thought at the start. So much about life was _familiar._

Because perhaps it was.

Perhaps, the soul truly does transcend time, because even if at the start they were only strangers—they felt like home.

His mother looked like this was the first time she truly had spent her days just smiling, and his uncle Kenny teaching him how to swing a knife felt like the words from an old friend.

Where later on, the memories he thought weren’t his own kept coming instead of leaving, so he let them stay.

One day, Levi sat down, staring at the marmalade of the sky past his window and ponders.

“Timeless,” he whispered then. The sky was timeless.

There was a familiar comfort that he always found within the streaks of marmalade. Golden hour came and gleamed, bringing light and nostalgia with it, where every time he’d set his gaze upon it, Levi would always feel like he’s _soaring._ The balls of hit feet feel light, he’s tilting forward, then back, arms outstretched as he leaned half his body out the window, and he’d close his eyes.

Behind them he’d see skies. Shades of the sunset blended like the most perfect shade of marmalade and peach, painted across the canvas that was the timeless sky. The sky that’s watched with patient eyes as souls return and leave the earth, like a cycle. The sixty year lifespan of a mortal seeming like it finishes within a blink of an eye, and Levi’s rendered awestruck— _every time._

There’s something magical about the concept of time, he thinks.

In the past life, he could have been a savior. He could have wielded a sword and soared through the skies like he’s always found comfort in.

_Much like the visions he’d see in his dreams._

Only the tales coming from his dreams were of tragedy. Life that was started, just so it could end. _Taken._ A love that was given, then lost, as it faded from his very own hands that trembled, stained with red and helpless.

Levi shivers at the memory of those dreams every time.

It seemed like a far fetched memory, if anything. Perhaps in the past life he was brave enough to love, but with good also comes bad, he supposes. If there is a give, then there is a take. The universe gives life, only to take it. The deities gives love, then expected him to take it as a lesson and not as a gift.

The lesson came as regret, Levi remembers.

The dreams after the loss still came in flashes. Like the puzzle pieces scattered throughout the broken timeline of his dreams. He recalls no name, but he does see flashes of hazel eyes that look almost golden in the sun.

A girl who loved to bake. Stubborn when she _shouldn’t_ be, but it was because her heart was always in the right place. She held life like it was her burden alone to cradle, and fought against the world that’s done nothing but _take_ from her.

A dream where they talked of a house by the sea, a land beyond the walls, and a future that looked more and more tangible as the time— _from his dreams—_ progressed.

When he wakes, he knows that in that lifetime, she was who love was. She was the lesson that he learned, and the what ifs that lingered with him up until the next life.

-

Because it’s a thousand and some years more, the life after the last, where their souls are reborn and kindness is with them. The world looks different, but the same.

It’s the sky that Levi recognizes first.

He’s standing under what feels like a familiar being. Celestial, watchful eyes that peer into his soul, pulling out the right bits of memory that has the puzzle pieces clicking into place.

Then it strikes him.

Erwin, the valedictorian from class was the commander in the past life. Hanji, who loved the world a little too much was his friend and ally in another life. Petra, the girl from class who always resonated a little too intimately with the earth was the subordinate who died too soon.

Levi watches, as the wispy skies swirl with the remnants of a tale he thought would only be vivid dreams at best. They sit beside him, and face him as the memories he’s had all along—where just like that, the what ifs finally begin to trickle in, reminding him that they were still unanswered.

They ask him the same question each time too. “ _What if you were given more time?”_ they often whisper. _“What if she took two steps the other way and lived to see the fall of the caged walls with you?”_

_“What if the love that was given was meant to be just a gift and not a lesson?”_

_“What if the world was kind enough to let you love?”_

It haunts him. When Levi wakes at night, eyes wide and trembling as they face up first towards the ceiling, then when he’d feel too caged in, he’d turn to his window to peer at the sky. It was endless, reminding him of the infinity he has yet to hold, so it comforts him.

He knows his soul has been with the world once, before it left, and eventually returned. To answer the what ifs, he presumes. In his dreams there was always the nagging feeling that he was meant to _do_ something—not _for_ anyone, but for _himself._ The person he was in his dreams— _the past life—_ only knew sacrifice and selflessness.

The name he bears in this life is familiar, as do a lot of things, but he’s different in more ways than one. Often, Levi looks at life in the eye and just lives it. He smiles easier, and happiness flows from sources instead of coming in short bursts. He holds his blessings in his hands, treasures them like he did in the lives past, because in this life, there’s something in his heart that tells him to love just a little more gently.

(And he does.)

He loves and gives, and gives—because of love.

He plants tulips with his mother, and says his thanks before every meal. There’s a sky outside of his window—the kind that’s ancient and observant, so Levi sits by his window every night posing questions to universe that offers him only silence in returns.

But it’s in the silence where he finds his answers, none the less. They tell him to wait, and to watch. To listen to the dreams, and grasp at the messages from every being higher than himself.

It’s a funny thing, really, because he’d always thought that living life with the memories of the past would be lonely—but he supposes there’s a reason for everything.

So he’s patient.

The dreams come, and tell him stories. They resonate with the same nostalgia as the kind that a fond memory brings. Flashes of amber, and marmalade. Hazel, and the glare of glasses. There’s a bullet, then there’s life. Love blooms, like a flower in full bloom before it’s plucked at its highest peak of life.

He trembles every time.

But he waits.

The what ifs piece themselves into more questions, but Levi remains steadfast.

He knows in the past life there was love—and he’s here, remembering all of these now—because there still _is_ love.

-

And so they started like that, and stayed with it.

“I think I knew you in a past life,” Levi opens up to Jenna one day.

It’s six twenty three on a Thursday, and the streets outside are more quiet than other days. A couple of customers come by, mostly regulars, where Levi rings up their orders and addresses them by their name as they do with him.

Jenna laughs, sat at the table on the opposite end of the bar counter, her head propped up with her hands. Ever since they were together, it took her some thorough realization that Levi’s always had this hyperfixation with past lives.

Perhaps there’s some truth to the myth, but Jenna was never one to ponder much.

Coincidences were more common than most people think, but she thinks it’s just a work of serendipity at best, and not exactly of a higher being. Levi could romanticize the skies and the infinity all he wanted, but most of the time she just kept to herself and listened to him more than talked.

Levi wipes down the counters, eyes far away and gaze calm as he speaks. “I mean it.”

“So another life, huh?” Jenna echoes, turning to look at him.

It’s undeniable the smile he carries with him is familiar, but perhaps that was because of love. Love tends to have a way of making even strangers feel like old friends. Levi and the peculiar way he holds his mug, the blue of his eyes, the smell of pine—every moment with him felt like a reoccurring moment from an old dream.

Not that she minded.

Love was felt, and was here. Past lives or buried memories, or even those dreams she used to have, everything is already too perfectly set in place for her to try to poke at curiosity again.

“Would you believe me if I said I remember you from another life though?” she hears him ask, the tone of his voice much more serious than she had initially anticipated. There’s not much of a change in the atmosphere, and the skies still swirls. The world continues to inhale and exhale, bringing them along to move with the rhythm of the motion.

The steady tick of the clock above as well as the tapping of the water droplets hitting the sink serves as white noise.

“What if I told you that I think we’re here because we met a long time ago?”

“Like, in another age?” Jenna questions, humoring him with a teasing lilt of her voice.

Levi chuckles, happiness and contentment rolling off of his shoulder like gentle waves.

“Like in another world,” he answers.

“Were we happy in that world?”

“We were, but we had to sacrifice so much.”

Jenna blinks at him, a little confused, but still intrigued. “What did you have to sacrifice?”

Levi stops his movements, staring at her with an indiscernible look in his eye, remembering the meaning of tragedy. He sees red, and glassy eyes. Jenna’s hands that felt cold, and a memory of whispering confessions into the breeze that could never carry it as high as the heavens when she passed.

“Everything,” Levi answered, a sad smile on his face.

-

The truth is, it’s really him who remembers her first.

Perhaps it’s the work of mercy that Jenna doesn’t recall her past life. Levi comes to know that they come to her in only fragments within her dreams at best. Often, he’d catch her looking at the skies like she’s yearning to soar, and he understands. So when moments like that comes and Jenna’s feeling for the memories she doesn’t know she’s lived through in another life, in another world once, Levi holds her hand.

He hopes it’s enough.

Jenna’s always quick to smile at him afterwards, where just like that Levi already knows that he’s doing more than enough.

(Because he always is, she tells him.)

Love in this life moves slow, like the waters from a pond untouched in hidden within the depth of a forest’s foliage. Jenna and Levi move together like a well oiled machine, only this time there’s no need for blood to be shed nor lives to be compromised.

There’s a beauty in the way they communicate, as outsiders would say.

Levi would brew the tea, or stock the shelves whereas Jenna would be fixing the display of pastries right by the counter. Earl grey with a slice of raspberry cake, or black tea with a cinnamon roll.

This life was quiet, but it worked.

Every time Jenna looks at him with eyes that he can _truly_ say is as old as time, Levi’s told of the secrets of the universe. The soul is infinite, it says, for moments like _these._ For questions that were left unanswered in the past to be answered in the now. Loose ends tied, and chapters either closed, continued, or completely rewritten from the start.

Levi remembers, and he thinks that maybe it’s for the sake of finally being given a gift this time around and not just as a lesson.

He tells her stories, and hints though. Jenna doesn’t remember the past, but he feels as if it’s only for the best. Death was an ugly face, and hers having have happened in an abrupt, painful way surely wouldn’t be a good memory to bring back. In ignorance, was also the tendrils of mercy.

Levi watches her smile at the world, and thinks it looks like how it always did.

She’s timeless.

She still scrunched her nose the same, and said hello the same. She held his hand, her thumb quick to dart out and rub soothing circles along the back of his hand, as if it’s second nature. She’d roll over in bed to bury her face in his neck, where when he’d breathe in, feels choked up at the realization that she _still_ smells like every bit of sunshine.

Jenna looked at him like he was love, always.

She said I love you, and kissed him, and he’d feel his heart bloom like it never failed to do, because he knows that was just his soul remembering.

So it’s him taking a seat next to her, when the skies looked like the ones from the world that was _once_ home, where he gives her at least the good parts of it.

“Wanna hear a story?” he’d say, and he’d smile even if his eyes were towards the sun, because he always would feel Jenna’s head lean against his shoulder right after.

“What kinda story?” she’d laugh, sounding free.

(In this life, they would _always_ be free, Levi reminds himself, his heart feeling more than light.)

It’s a different kind of euphoria that he feels at every realization that kindness _truly_ is with them this time—that the world allows the skies to burst and flowers to bloom _for_ them in this life. There was patience, and love. One with the other, intertwining to create a balance, and they never had to compromise anything this time around.

“A story about a girl,” Levi starts, looking far away. “A girl who was a soldier, who baked every five pm and loved the world a little too much to be ruthless.”

“She sounds lame,” Jenna snorts beside him.

Levi chuckles, finding humor in her words. Her hand squeezes his, like always, and he could just cry at the feel of how her head fit against the crook of his shoulder just right. There was no moments to describe “barely” this time around. Everything was _perfectly in place,_ and Levi considers himself more than blessed for that.

“She loved the skies,” he continues anyway. “She’d be in the front lines and do dumb shit like disobey orders from her superior when someone was in danger.”

“She sounds brave then,” Jenna mumbles.

Levi softens, humming out a soft yes as his agreement.

“There was also a boy who loved her,” Jenna continues, thinking that she’s playing along to Levi’s impromptu story telling.

He blinks, opting to keep his silence in place so that she continues.

Jenna shifts, blinking up at him and reaching up with her free hand to poke his cheek, getting him to crack a soft smile.

“There was a boy with eyes that are the same color as yours, and he always told her not to do the stuff she did anyway.”

Levi stills, as Jenna begins to look like she’s drifting somewhere far off. It’s her grip on his hand that reminds him that even if she dives into the nostalgia she _thinks_ is just imagination, she’s present in _this_ world and will forever be centered within the now.

Where she’s safe.

Alive.

Present.

_Home._

“He really loved her,” Jenna says softly, then later adds, “as much as she loved him.”

“Does your story end in a happy ending?” Levi prompts.

Jenna shakes her head. “She loved the sky too much so she flew, but maybe in another world they’re together.”

“In another life,” Levi hums as response, remembering the promise he told her in the past life—the one where he’d find her again, and fall in love with her, again.

He squeezes her hand hoping her soul is at ease with the promise he can finally say he delivered.

-

 _Because this is it,_ Levi thinks. He’s found her again, like a work of serendipity and fate alike, and in love with her, again—tenfold.

He’s watching her through a crowd, the rest of the world blurred in comparison to her, because in Levi’s eyes she would always be the one to hold the spotlight. Jenna’s laughing, her eyes crinkling into the crescents happiness tends to hold her with, and his heart feels home.

At the hello he prompted in _this_ life, Levi knows that love didn’t start—but rather, it _continues._

He watches as love blooms again, even wider and more beautiful than it initially was before life was ended.

The love that they’ve had in lives past, as well as the present remains. It’s as timeless and as infinite as the skies above that watch, and Levi is grateful.

He supposes he’ll always have the lessons learned and memories from Paradis, where he had to sacrifice more than he bargained for, but in this life, this is where he reaps what he’s sown.

He has a teashop and love. In this life, neither of them knows pain nor is threatened by the end. The pastries she bakes him always tastes the same, as do the way he brews his tea.

It’s in the present where Levi finally understands that as fickle as life truly is—as fast as it starts and ends, it also is the soul that makes it seemingly infinite.

Jenna’s I love you that feels the same, and her eyes that still look like it’s meant to hold all the rays of the sun. He finds the balance in between both.

He doesn’t know what the future has in store for the both of them, but he’s certain that this time around, love is meant to be accepted as it bloomed over the years and lingered. For now, Levi lives in the present with no fear, because no matter what the fate could throw at them—he’s more than certain of how he’d just find her in the life after this all over again.

 _“Will you be there when I wake?”_ she asked him then, and Levi thinks to himself that everytime she wakes he always is.

The blue of the oceans that hold the waves caught against the browns of the living earth that knows no time.

It’s him, always telling her that _he’s here_ , and that he _loves her_ , that makes his soul grow fond because of the promise finally fulfilled.

“In the next life,” he remembers his words, because the next life _is_ this.

He knows he’s just a speck of dust within the universe that only hangs above the world to watch, but his soul, along with Jenna’s is eternally _infinite._

So it’s in the past, the present, and every lifetime to come after the next where Levi is certain to say that he’s never afraid to dive deep when it comes to love.

He knows if he trips he’ll always be up and finding her again—just to hold her hand and fall in love again.

_(and again and again and again and again.)_

Until infinity.

-


	6. Chamomile Over Earl Grey

He counts the ways he imagines he would kiss her in front of the world, unafraid, over and over again in his head and Levi catches himself at a loss.

**_The first, he’d just hold her._ **

The feel of her skin under his palms are familiar— _warm._ She’d smile, like she always did, the right end of her lip quirking just a little more than the left, and she’d blink slow— _twice._ She’d squint a little, in the way that doesn’t look strange to him, but the look of the five forty five sunset against the hazel of her eyes looked like heaven, so he would only stare. His throat would be dry, lips parted, and like always, be rendered speechless. 

He’d hold her, close, like always, because he has that now. _An always._ A fixture that felt eternal within a world that reminded him day in and day out that they were anything _but_ that. The world would watch as they would dive into another world of their own—where love was just two, and it would be okay.

A hush would fall, the earth would hold its breath, then he’d kiss her. Levi never thought himself as much of a romantic—because the truth is, he _isn’t_ , but for Jenna, he supposes he would be anything.

**_As for the second, he’d make it a point to just kiss her, even if the world would stop and stare._ **

The world was the one thing that remained in motion, he supposes. The sun rises just to set, and the waves pull back from the shores in the east just to travel again to the west. Perhaps it would be after another battle. Adrenaline would rage within his blood, and from knowing Jenna more than he lets on, he knows that the situation would be similar from her end too. He’d take the first step, because initiative was something that was never unfamiliar to him, and he’d keep going.

No hesitation, nor second thoughts. He’d spot her through the crowd—because he _always_ just has his own way of finding her even through hell, and he’d hold her.

He imagines there’d be blood on both their cheeks, tatters along her cloak and his, and her hair would be a little messy, but it’s _her—love—_ so he knows he won’t think much of it.

He’d kiss her like that, and the world would know.

A few would stare, and a couple comrades in the back would holler at best, and it would be okay. To let the world know that _this,_ was, is, and will _always_ be love wouldn’t be the salvation that saves not just their world but everyone else’s too—but for them it would be enough.

Beauty, he’d hold in his arms, her fingers just barely brushing against the fabric of his cloak, and she would look at him as if she wields the means to stare into his soul.

Levi would be okay with it. Vulnerability was the _something_ that came from trust, and he trusted her. Jenna was the first to be introduced to Levi Ackerman, as the human _and_ the soldier. She knew just how many teaspoons of sugar he liked in his tea, and the fact that he preferred chamomile instead of earl grey. Black tea was what she gave him during weekdays, then his usual cup of chamomile in the weekends, served with the kind of pastry _he_ knows she likes to bake on her downtime.

She knew he trimmed his own hair—once every month, but along the way also came to learn that he secretly preferred it when she’d be the one to sit him down during day offs and do it for him. The quiet snipping of the scissors, the gentle taps to the left or right side of his face to direct him where to face, and her humming was what love sounded like.

His name coming from her lips, finally sounding like _his_ name—the identity he knew he had underneath the armor, and not just the name beside to a title of humanity’s strongest.

When Levi imagines how he’d hold then kiss her, finally facing the world, he’d always been patient in his thoughts.

There was an unspoken gentleness that came with love. Like cradling the head of an infant when they’re born, he wanted to be careful in his ways. Jenna was strong—one of the _strongest,_ perhaps, and Levi knew just as much.

But he loved her as the girl who would sit behind him and cut away the dead ends of his hair once a month, humming the kind of melody that somehow would always put him at ease. He cradled her as if she was a secret, nestled in his palms that were rough to the touch—but she never minded.

Levi always softens when he remembers how she would never flinch at his touch.

Love was as gentle as it was unbreakable, and he knew that much.

But still, he thinks, as he watches her move through the motions of her today, retelling stories and making comments as others do the same—he’s never truly marveled at love as how it really just _is_ until Jenna.

-

For a love that’s nurtured by two lives that’s meant to only ever be fleeting, it feels awfully infinite.

Levi knew that for a while perhaps that’s all they would ever be. A secret, he means. Meant to be kept as is, and remembered to be a fleeting memory of happiness later on in life. He met her, then at hello, love would only continue to blossom.

-

It isn’t as much of wanting to keep her hidden from the world that drove the both of them to keep their relationship hidden at the start, but rather it was just timing.

Having priorities other than what they had in their personal lives was a common ground Levi and Jenna often had silent agreements towards. News was news, and they thought to themselves that it would rather be unsettling to announce the bloom of love in the midst of a war.

War was ugly. It was the one thing that reduced life into just a _number_ on a sheet Levi would have to report to headquarters at the end of every mission.

On the other hand, Jenna thinks the same.

To announce a blooming love that was everything that war isn’t felt too out of place for the situation.

The comfort that stayed constant for the both of them on the other hand, was the fact that the skies always looked the same. Regardless of life, death, good, or bad, they swirled with the most beautiful colors day in and day out. Whether it be at 7 in the morning, when the sun would climb a little higher, 12 at noon, when blue meant daylight, 7 at night, where marmalade overcame the gold, or at 12 midnight, where the stars would dot the skies like the freckles of the heavens.

Levi supposes that he could carry the weight of the _whole_ universe on his shoulders and feel it all, or just balance a feather on the tips of his fingers because he found that _that’s_ the kind of high love always seemed to bring, and the skies wouldn’t care.

They would stay as the constant that swirled as is, regardless of the stains of the world.

The clouds roll, and the breeze swirls, moving languidly despite the screams that tear through the earth that continued to rage, as if they carry a secret far greater than humanity’s greed.

And the both of them realized that they wanted to give their relationship the same kind of nature like that. Not like a secret that was meant to be hidden from now up until eternity, but rather just have it as their constant, that they can always go home to and call as theirs regardless of the state of the world outside.

Love then on, bloomed despite it staying as hushed. The quiet looks were just looks, and the kisses exchanged behind closed doors wasn’t because of shame—but it was just who they are.

And it was okay.

(It _is_ okay.)

**-**

“Say,” Hanji prompts. “Levi,” she continues, turning to face the man.

It’s not that a hush falls over the crowd, like stories would usually exaggerate a dip in the moment would be like, but it’s truth that a silence _was_ reached. Jean, along with the other cadets from the 104th ceased their murmuring and peeked in Hanji’s direction, curiosity getting the best of them.

At the sudden increase in attention, Hanji clears her throat, but continues to voice her thoughts anyway. A couple feet away from her, sat at the same log, Levi exhales, sipping his tea and quirking an eyebrow at her.

Inwardly, he chuckles, thinking to himself that Jenna was probably the one to make the tea for the group this time around. It’s only a Wednesday—a work day, but he recognizes the signature taste of chamomile.

Across the flames of the campfire in between point a and point b, Levi and Jenna share a quiet look.

From his end, he says his thanks, while from hers, she only smiles. 

From the sidelines, watching the both of them with a keen eye, Hanji hides her smirk behind her own mug.

“Levi,” she prompts again, exhaling first before slightly increasing the volume of her voice. “What do you think love is?”

And it’s _this_ time where a hush truly does fall over the crowd. Jenna snorts, pushing the frame of her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, already knowing that the cogs in Levi’s brain probably are at the early stages of malfunctioning. And true to her assumptions, when she glances in his direction, his eyes are already wide and he’s sputtering over his drink.

Hanji smirks, again, and Jenna can only sigh when she catches sight of it from her peripherals.

She supposes that even if there was a lot the both of them could hide from most people—Hanji would always be an exception. She’d never really been the type to blend in with what you would call _“most people.”_

Truth be told, Hanji had noticed the change from Levi’s behavior for a while now.

All her years in knowing him, she’d concluded that Levi was a blunt man. There was no other motive to his movements, nor words. He did what he meant to do, and said what he meant to say. He was straightforward, and honest. No sugarcoating the situations, no matter how grim most of the time they were, because he was just _like_ that. It doesn’t go as far as saying he’s insensitive to the situation, but she always understood that he always means to just be honest when he can.

For most, ignorance is bliss, but for a soldier, ignorance is what kills.

And it worked like that—until eventually, it didn’t.

The past few months before she caught on to Jenna and Levi’s budding relationship, the first hint that she picked up on was the smell of chamomile during weekdays. The many times she’d visited Levi’s home, and “ransacked” his kitchen— _as the man in question himself dubs it as—_ she had only seen an assortment of black tea and the occasional earl grey. Perhaps just trying out something new for a _change_ shouldn’t have been alarming, but Hanji felt that there was something more than what the situation only gave away.

Black tea on weekdays because Levi liked tea more than coffee, and she _knew_ that. He held his mug a little more peculiarly than the next person: lifting from the rim instead of the handle, so that was part of his _usual_.

Then eventually, it was one day where she noticed chamomile on a Wednesday afternoon.

For a soldier who reveled in the comfort of routine and living with what’s _known_ , that little factor had been a stark change— _especially_ from someone like Levi.

A question was prompted, to assess the situation, and he’d only shrugged at her query and said he wanted to try a change.

(And that _should_ have been the end of it.)

Until a week after that little fiasco, where she spent a weekend at Jenna’s apartment outside of the barracks was where she saw the missing puzzle piece of a puzzle she hadn’t even been _aware_ she had to solve.

In a cabinet situated at the far left of her kitchen, was a little packet of chamomile tea, looking more hidden than put on display. Hanji only smiled to herself, knowing that the glances the two would often exchange in the morning perhaps meant something more than just a simple _goodmorning_ from subordinate to superior.

Hanji never found it in herself to bring it up to Jenna that day, only settling with grabbing a bag of flour and asking her to bake the kind of bread she’d been craving lately.

Conversation afterwards flowed like it usually did, but for a woman with eyes too keen for her own good—there was just _something_ in Jenna’s posture that had the usual load on her shoulders looking a little lighter than how she carried it for most days.

“Been catching up on rest?” Hanji asked instead, and she watched, breath coming in and out like usual, because if she was being honest with herself, she’d already connected more than just dots in this mystery.

She watches as Jenna smiled, the kind that she knows probably stems from something other than just her usual source of happiness.

“Something like that,” Jenna laughed.

“Something good?” Hanji prodded in return, a knowing look in her eye.

“Something great.”

-

And the _something great,_ lead to exactly _this,_ Hanji supposes.

Levi, half choking on the chamomile tea that was both the hint and the giveaway to confirming the little _secret_ the two of them had been holding on to.

Catching Jenna’s eye midway and sending a knowing smirk her way, one where she only rolls her eyes at with a soft snort.

“What do you think love is?” she asks Levi again, knowing full well that it’s rather an odd question to pose in the middle of a mission when there was much, _much_ more serious matters to be focusing on.

Levi sighs anyway, already well moved on from the initial shock that only seemed to catch him off guard at most.

From the group situated next to theirs, it’s Eren who clears his throat with the intention to break the already awkward atmosphere.

“I don’t think we should be talking about love right now…” he mutters, and Jean’s quick to shrug, not exactly adding to the former’s comment.

“When you think about it,” Hanji counters, looking thoughtful. “When will we ever have the time to have conversations like this?”

“Tomorrow we could die, and an hour from now, who knows, we could die too,” she says with a matter of fact tone. “I think we should be allowed to be a little human sometimes.”

Levi thinks about her words, and Jenna watches, through the flickering flames of the fire as tiny epiphanies bloom before they are realized, the usual blue in Levi’s eyes looking _just_ a bit more golden tonight. Almost like he’s been _found,_ she thinks with a smile.

This was the Levi Ackerman she’s come to know: the person he’s cradled within the armor. The one who found that he liked chamomile over earl grey, and two teaspoons of sugar instead of just drinking it without any kind of sweetener. He was human, and a little more flawed than how the mass perceived him as, and she loved him just like that.

Love, shared, where the reason isn’t the big things, but just chalking it up to _just because._

“I love you, just because,” sounding like a moment of relief that makes the load on their shoulders feel just _that_ much lighter, not as a declaration made to the entire world that would change the course of factors outside their own.

And the more Levi thinks of Hanji’s words, it’s undeniable that there’s more than just truth in her words. Tonight, he softens to the realization that her words are sort of like a momentary rest she offers not just to him but for everyone else around.

The expedition today had been a little more grueling than the rest, he remembers. More lives lost meaning the numbers for the casualties are a little higher this time around. In daylight, he’ll have to write a number greater than last with a pen, and give a report as if that’s all they’ll ever be— just _numbers._

But tonight, he supposes he can sip the chamomile and smile at the fact that love— _Jenna—_ was the one who made it with him in mind. Tonight, perhaps, he’ll exhale and pretend the peace of the moment is lasting, and that he’s just seated around a campfire with some friends, sharing a conversation where laughter will come easy.

It’s Hanji who laughs first, taking an initiative to lighten the atmosphere for the broken, where after a few more moments, it’s Jean who follows suit.

“Answer the question Captain,” a recruit he doesn’t recall the name of chimes in from the background. Levi huffs in response, blowing his bangs out of the way.

Jenna continues to watch from her space across him, the expression on her face giving away the fact that she’s a little more amused than nervous. Levi quirks a brow her way, thinking that the scarlet of the flames makes the hazel of her eyes look warm.

(Though truth be told, everything about her had always radiated warmth.)

The browns of her hair, and how they look chesnut in the sun; the hazel of her eyes, that shimmer like gold under the sun; her hands, when they’d cup his face, and her lips, whose warmth lingered after the kisses she’d give him in the in-betweens of here and there.

“Love’s a lot of things,” Levi manages to mutter after he feels that all eyes have turned towards his direction by now.

“Like knowing that they like this over that,” he continues, where from the corner of his eye he can see Hanji smile a little in his direction. There’s no malice in her expression, only patience, so for that he feels a little braver.

Then like a kid venturing into the open for the first time, first he stands on shaky legs—unfamiliar with the lightness of the conversation, before he eventually warms up to it because talking about the little nothings is _nice,_ so he continues. “Love is closing your eyes and feeling safe when you fall asleep, because you know they’ll be able to cut it just like you would.”

“Love is being able to trust,” Hanji echoes, and there’s a certain lightness to her voice, that lingers in the atmosphere. The rest of the crowd offers a halfhearted shrug, some reveling in the momentary rest, while the others are already counting down the minutes until this pocket of mercy ends.

For Levi, he’s caught in between, but still, he continues. Jenna watches him, the comfort of the silence feeling like it’s theirs, and _just_ their’s alone, so he speaks like she’s the only one who’s listening.

“Trust,” Levi hums, nodding along to Hanji’s earlier words. “Trusting that you can go out into the core of even hell, and still know that they’ll make it home with you. Love is a little stubborn—“ he pauses, smirking at Jenna who only rolls her eyes at him with a laugh, “—but it’s also love that makes you understand the reasons for it.”

“Love makes you try new things,” Levi says, staring at the cooling liquid in the mug, recalling the first time Jenna had introduced him to chamomile.

He was hesitant, finding no fault in his usual earl grey, but the change was one that stayed.

 _Jenna,_ he thinks, is also another hello that came—and stayed.

“Captain,” Jean drawls. “You and Jenna are obvious as hell.”

Hanji laughs, taking note of the contrast between Jean’s polite way of addressing Levi and the context of what he said that followed right after.

Across the campfire, Jenna sighs, already feeling like a headache’s approaching from the way Petra seems to nudge her shoulder on the side. When she looks up, she notices that Levi chose to keep his silence, which usually would have guaranteed their secret safe—like it did before. But now, it’s the blatant red on his cheeks that was confirmation for Jean’s comment enough.

“Love makes you do that too, I guess,” Hanji snorts as response in lieu of Levi, who only sighs, turning his head the opposite direction and looking away.

“It makes you realize a lot of things actually,” Jenna pipes up.

Levi visibly relaxes from the sound of her voice, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by the rest, though they choose to keep their silence to help their captain save face.

“It makes you realize that for a world that has a lot of ugly, you’re still allowed to have the little things that make you happy,” she continues. “Like cutting someone’s hair because they trust you, having them try new tea that they end up getting hooked on, and baking pastries for them once you realize that they secretly have a sweet tooth.”

“ _Captain_ has a sweet tooth?” Eren guffaws, earning a resonating _Oi_ from the man in question.

“There’s a lot about Levi’s very human, believe it or not,” Jenna responds with a laugh.

“So is this you admitting that there’s something going on between the both of you?” Petra asks with a sly smile beside her, nudging her shoulder again.

“Isn’t it already obvious?” Hanji comments, right before reaching over beside her to clap Levi on the back, with another laugh.

“Say it,” she says again, and when she sees the traces of hesitation in his eyes, she exhales once more, clapping him softly on the shoulder again.

“It’s okay,” she reassures. “Tonight, just pretend you’re a man.”

“He’s already a man,” Jean mumbles, the metaphor completely flying over his head.

And because tonight he’s exactly _just_ that, Levi chuckles to himself, letting the moment just be, and letting the harder part of himself go in the process of it.

“I could say a lot of things,” he begins, and another hush falls over the crowd. The people gathered listen, like they would to a man who’s just in the present telling stories, and Levi smiles. Jenna watches him, knowing the words he says are _for_ her, like they always are, so she smiles at him in a way that lets him know it’s the kind just for him too.

Like a secret shared over an open space, they let the silence dictate their I love yous, where despite the absence of frank words, they’re still heard.

“I honestly could say _so_ much,” Levi exhales again, sounding more breathless than he ever did while running.

In the moment he thinks of the metaphor laced between earl grey and chamomile. The routine he’d always had was okay, and living in the daylight running through the motions as they _were_ had _been_ okay. Then Jenna came, not like a storm, but like that presence that enters and makes even the loudest crowd suddenly hush. Her hello felt like the first rainfall after a long drought, and even if the ache on his shoulders didn’t go away, through time, they did lighten.

Like a sip of chamomile after a long day, it’s the presence and mercy of rest that greets him and lets him know he can still have moments like this.

Moments like just sharing a couple stories over a campfire within moonlight, and moments like sharing a comforting silence with love as she snips away the longer ends of his hair.

-

So it’s once again where he counts the amount of times he thinks about how he would tell the world that he loves her, and despite all the scenarios in his head, it looks like this:

A campfire, some words, and looking at eyes of hazel through the scarlet of the flames.

“Love’s like choosing chamomile over earl grey,” Levi finishes, and in his face, Jenna sees truth.

(His absolute truth.)


	7. We Owe It To Us

It’s like remembering that it’s still possible to have moments of rest despite the war that rages on.

In daylight, he is one person. Eren Jaegers knows himself as the sinner, and the redeemer. He is the sacrifice, the power, and the war itself. War that’s only here because of desire, then intensified by human greed. Lives that came to be with the intention to linger, perhaps to blossom even, into something far _greater_ than just crawling through the blood stained soil of the present, but eventually turning out to just be another flicker.

Flickering and fading, as if it was just a light barely giving off light in a world that was drenched in everything that brings darkness.

Because lately, it’s felt so much like it is just that.

 _Only_ that.

The reality and noise of the present scream at him so much that Eren wants to _scream_ himself. But when he looks at the mirror, it’s always the same pair of dull _fucking_ eyes that stare back at him. He’s only nineteen, but he’s tired. The lines in his face speak as if he’s centuries beyond his years, and in a way there _is_ some truth to that. With power, comes sacrifice. The power he wields has never felt much of a blessing, he thinks to himself. Rather, it’s felt like just one end of the bargain.

In order to give to the world you spill your blood to protect, you must also _give—_ the universe said.

And his _sacrifice,_ Eren thinks, was his freedom for the sake of others.

To turn himself into the villain of the story was more than just a _heavy_ price to pay, but past the flames and past the boundaries of human reasoning—he saw what he yearned for.

To look at a child, in time, and tell them that they’re free.

Freedom, like the absence of limitations and walls because the world, by then, would truly be theirs to _conquer._ There would be no universal meaning connected to freedom, because it would be just how it _is._

Perhaps it’s owning a bakery on the quieter side of a village, or perhaps it’s standing in the middle of a field—unafraid.

Fear, Eren thinks, is what _cages_ a person.

-

And like always, he seeks a moment of _rest._

The voices in his head are screaming, like they _always_ do, but tonight, they’re just a little too loud for him to try to sort through. When he cranes his neck, he feels every crack of his joints, as well as the fact that exhaling seems to just put an emphasis to the weight he’s more than aware he’ll be carrying until the end of this lifetime.

In daylight, he’s a sinner.

Eren remembers all that he’s done, knows what he’s knowing, and has visions of what _is_ still to come. It’s tragedy upon tragedy; one right after the next, where even when he closes his eyes all he sees is _red._

So he keeps them open.

He slumps in his chair, and knock his head back, letting it thump against the back of the chair. There’s a dull pain, but it fades. It’s a reminder that he can still _feel,_ and that he’s still _here,_ but it doesn’t do much except remind him of what is yet to come.

The silence lingers for a fraction of a second right before the voices telling him he’s going to be the reason for the _burn_ begins to yell louder, and louder, and louder, and louder—

Until someone opens the door.

A voice, more than familiar to him registers in his ear, and when he turns his head he sees Jenna.

She stands by the door, only half of her body peeking into the room, the look on her face hesitant. Eren recognizes the look of patience on her face, and he knows she’s trying her best to understand him.

Though to be fair, there isn’t much he’s told her—only enough to have her thinking that the situation will still turn for the best, and because she _trusts_ him—a fact that Eren swallows his guilt towards—she never asked for more. Then again, when she watches him, she’s always had a feeling there was still some things he left out when he told his stories.

There’s a kind of pain she could only read on his expression, but never pinpoint the exact reason for. When Eren would speak to her plans about Paradis and the next steps to freedom—whatever that word could even _mean_ at this point, now that the situation proved itself to be that much more different than what they initially thought of—he would slightly look away.

Neither the rest of the squad, nor even the captains seemed to notice the miniscule difference in his behavior, but Jenna did. She noticed, but never said much.

And because sometimes, ignorance was bliss, for a while she granted not just herself—but him as well, just that.

Truth is, she just didn’t know if she could even handle the truth if it were to come out.

-

To her, Eren Jaeger would _always_ be just the boy with the turquoise eyes, who spoke of the ocean one too many times under the golden light of five thirty. She didn’t love him because they shared a history together, but rather, because with him, it always felt like they were working towards _building_ one. There’s a lot of uncertainty that hangs around the world that was anything but constant, but she supposes that Eren’s always going to be one of the things that stay.

He’s stayed, despite his power.

He’s _stayed,_ throughout the fall of the wall.

He’s _stayed,_ despite the possibilities of freedom branching out into a multitude of roads, and not just the one they thought they would _only_ have. He held her hand, and still talked of the _this and that_ little nothings of the world as if they were still cradled by a world that only knew this much space within the walls.

The more Eren thinks about it, the peace within the walls truly _was_ Paradise—compared to this at least. The thoughts and the truths in his head felt _too_ heavy for just one man to bear, but he had no choice. More than anything, Eren craved for just a moment of _silence_ —and perhaps this was it.

Perhaps it was this little slice of mercy the world still chose to leave him with despite all the wrong he’s done. (and will do.)

Perhaps it’s Jenna.

His Jenna.

The _one_ constant he will always call as _his,_ because she always _would be_ that. There was an eternal sort of love he felt from her, and because he felt the same _towards_ her, he made sure to let that be known so they could allow it to stay and bloom.

And it did.

She was the warm hands that felt like the sun against the skin of his that were always cold. Her hands had some scars of her own, and was rough to touch at times, but he wouldn’t trade it for even the world for as long as he gets to sit beside her and trace the lines and little bumps across her skin and remember the stories of how they got there.

The silence in the room hangs, like a tapestry telling the story of their time—as if it’s an ancient being that knows the past, the present, and their future, but he welcomes it.

She moves towards him, at first hesitant with her steps, before she eventually overcomes it and begins to move with purpose. There are words that are left unspoken written across her eyes, where he can easily tell she’s wrestling to whether spit it out or not from the way she seems to bite her lip. Eren keeps his eyes on her as she makes her way across the room, and towards him.

There’s a faint scratch on her cheek, but when she finally stands in front of him, in between his legs, he leans forward and kisses it anyway. He knows it will heal, but he still kisses it tender just because he can.

“You’re hurt,” he murmurs, slipping out of the headspace where he has to be _this_ so freedom can be _that,_ and instead just presenting himself to her as a man who only loves.

“When aren’t we hurt?” Jenna’s quick to retaliate back, and Eren smiles in a knowing way, because as a soldier himself, he’s always understood the hidden metaphor she always wove in between her words.

At the start, he’s always considered the kind of ignorance that came with his old life was a blessing in disguise, but the more he thinks about it now, there’s still some good that comes with knowing things.

“Did it hurt?” he asks, his finger just hovering over the line above her skin.

Jenna shakes her head, a soft laugh quick to escape her. “It’s just a scratch, Eren.”

“But it’s still a wound right?” he asks, and the look in his eye tells her the message he means to deliver that goes far deeper beyond than just what he says.

Jenna can only smile, finding comfort in his words.

“We signed ourselves up for this kind of life, Eren,” Jenna points out afterwards anyway, more as a reminder for herself than for him. “There’s a lot of give and take in war. We’re lucky we only got away with a couple wounds.”

Eren listens to her, but keeps his eyes lingering around the scratch on her cheek. It’s just a surface wound, he notes. Deep enough to cut, but not enough to leave a scar. But it’s still red. To be human is only to have skin that will break and heal over and over again, after all.

“It’s not an easy kind of life,” Jenna hears him comment with a drawn out sigh of his own.

“Is there even a kind of life that’s easy?” she laughs in return, raising her arms to cup his face when he tilts his head up to look at her. Eren leans in before her hands even touch his skin—a little piece of nothing she can’t help but smile at. So much of their connection was made known without the need to use words, and for Jenna, she yearns to just take any moment she can get.

Eren thinks the same, because the screaming thoughts in his head manage to hush at the tranquility Jenna brings, blanketing it across their atmosphere. There’s a sort of relief that he admits to himself he could never truly get sick of at the _miniscule_ moment of rest where silence really just means _silence._

He still hears himself breathe in and out, and hears the sound of Jenna sniffle once or twice, but it was still silence. The clock on the wall ticks, steady, like the consistent _drip, drip, drip,_ of the water droplets hitting the sink in the corner of the room, but it’s a welcome kind of noise.

“Life can be easy,” Eren voices out, smiling a sad kind of smile. In his head, right now he imagines himself to be just a man sitting in a chair. The burden in his shoulders not amounting to the weight of literally the _whole_ world, but rather just _his_ world. There’s a kind of mercy in living life where your burden is just being unable to decide which kind of flowers his wife back home would like the best.

Looking at Jenna who had always been his anything and everything, it finally dawns on Eren that he _craves_ just that.

“Can it really?” he hears her ask anyway, and Eren nods, eager.

“Life would be easy if you just said you got that scratch on your cheek because you bumped into something, somewhere, and not because you were fighting.”

“Where would that somewhere be?” she prompts, caressing Eren’s cheek with the pads of her thumbs. It’s a little rough to the touch, the callouses and scars like a puzzle he knows the ins and outs of, but he leans in anyway.

There was comfort found in the familiarity, and Jenna, as his _always_ constant, embodied just that.

“Somewhere easy,” Eren replies, the look in his eye telling Jenna that he’s already begun to sunk into the early stages of slipping into his daydreams.

There was never malice in moments like these, she supposes. Rest was okay, and a momentary break in the reality that she understood was hard to take at times was a necessary thing to go through, after all. For someone who carried the burden of the world—she knows that exhaustion is a word that’s become a regular in Eren’s life.

“Easy like how?” she asks some more, smiling when she feels Eren’s arm wrap around her waist, pulling her down to sit on his lap. She hangs her arms around the back of his neck, pulling at the light strands of hair that managed to escape his hair tie.

Eren continues to keep his eyes on her, an easy kind of smile on his face—something that she honestly could get used to looking at—as he leans against her touch. “Just somewhere where we can do what we want, think how we want, and not have to carry the burden of consequences in our head.”

“You’ll only have scratches and scars from bumping into places because sometimes you forget to wear your glasses at home.”

“We’ll have a home?” Jenna questions, a happy lilt to her voice. “Together?”

“Together,” Eren chuckles with a voice akin to a whisper. It’s conversations like these where Jenna realizes that he’s a little more quiet, delivering his messages with a significantly softer tone than usual. But she knows it isn’t because he means to keep what they have as just a secret, but rather, he only says his confessions as if they are always just like that.

Jenna knows he loves her, as much as she does him, but Eren takes it upon himself anyway to whisper it to her like it’s a secret only she’s meant to hear.

Like a pinky promise shared between two kids at a playground, promising to meet each other the next day, perhaps to play pretend, or perhaps to just share candy over the swings.

Eren lets himself play pretend.

He imagines the little things about the what _would_ be, and revels within his thoughts.

“Why would I still have scars though?” she asks with a laugh, leaning close to be face to face with Eren. “If we’re living in an easier world, shouldn’t my skin be at least smooth?”

“It can,” he hums, then leans close to brush a lock of her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. His eyes zero in to the scratch on her cheek, smiling as he presses a kiss against it, and smiles at her. Jenna’s quick to shiver when Eren’s thumb ghosts over the faint scar across her shoulder, right past the collar of her shirt, her eyes locked on his as he continues, “—but would you still be human if you didn’t have scars?”

She smiles, a woeful look in her eye, already knowing the sentiment laced throughout Eren’s words. His skin was smooth, but despite that, she knows that he’s still a scarred man. There were wounds unseen to the eye that she knows he carries with him, and they weren’t the kind to fade at _all._

So she leans forward, pressing a kiss on his forehead—one that has him relaxing his shoulders, slumping into his seat, his grip around her tightening just a little more, as if to say he’s hanging on to her for support.

He’s a strong man, and Jenna knows as much as that, but she always gives him moments of rest much like these so that he can feel a little more human than the god the world has dubbed him to be.

The _Eren Jaeger_ she cradled within her arms was a just a man with the sea blue eyes, who dreamed of a kind of world that was merciful enough to give them scars from just the bumps in the corners instead of the souvenirs from war.

As he stares at her, he exhales, where at that very second, he also chooses that moment to lean forward, pressing his lips flush against hers. Eren’s quick to feel her smile into the kiss, a welcome feeling, so he smiles back. Closing his eyes, he pretends he’s inside a house that took almost no time in being turned into a home, and he’s just holding his world close to him, without as much of a care for the people outside of _this._

Eren kisses her, and she kisses back. Jenna takes note of the way his fingers seem to tighten around the fabric of her shirt, as if he’s desperate to keep her close. She breaks the kiss for a second, cupping his face in between her hands, whispering that she’s _right_ _there,_ and something in Eren doesn’t _break._

He doesn’t cry, but what he does is hold his breath. Eren inhales, then holds it. Words are caught in his throat and he suddenly realizes that there’s just _so_ much he wants to say, but he doesn’t know _how_ to start it. The voices in his head are quiet, and all he knows is what’s present in _this_ moment, so he revels in it.

It doesn’t overwhelm him in a bad way, but rather, it comes to him and leaves him just breathless. Eren’s kisses are frantic around her lips, before they move to her neck, leaving a trail of murmured confessions and light pecks around her throat. The words he says are mumbled, his voice muffled against the skin of her neck, but the sentiment in every kiss and every whisper reaches her like they always do.

Then she’s holding him, his slumped body against hers, where for that short while she lets him strip himself vulnerable, and hold on to her as if she’s stronger than he is. When she looks into his eyes, she sees a hurt that’s long been there but often veiled behind his words of false assurance, but she never ventures too far in.

Jenna knows the barriers are more for himself than for her; a false confidence he gives to himself as if it’s the mercy he’s long craved this whole time. There’s a salvation one can get in ignoring things sometimes, after all.

-

Then in the midst of the energy—in between the tangled limbs, breathless kisses, and heated glances, comes a knock at the door.

Eren sighs, and Jenna laughs, recognizing Jean’s voice bellow through the hallways followed by more insistent knocking against the door. “Pack it up Jaeger!”

Jenna stifles another laugh, finding amusement in the evident frustration in Eren’s features, already knowing that the moment was more lost than just broken by Jean’s impromptu cockblocking. Still, she allows him to still hold her, knocking her forehead against his lightly and tapping his cheek so that he looks at her.

“He said to pack it up,” she mutters with a laugh, her voice a whisper. Eren supposes that he likes it when conversations are exchanged like this. Like exchanging secrets through whispers even if there’s no one else in the room to hear them.

It’s the little things, he supposes. The scattered moments of rest that relieve the weight on his shoulders, because even if the moment was broken, happiness still remained. The desperation of his movements cease, and Jenna feels the grip that was clenched tight around the fabric of her shirt loosen. Instead, Eren only leans his forehead against the crook of her neck, exhaling a loud sigh that eventually just fizzled into laughter.

After the silence passes, Eren realizes two things in succession.

The first, is this: it’s the laughter and moments of candidness that has Eren realizing that love is meant to remain and nurtured and not just felt as a fleeting thing to get him by for the next day. It’s her laughter that rings, when Jean’s knocking on the door again that centers him back to earth and quiets the raging thoughts that do nothing but scream in his head.

It’s her saying that she’ll get back to him later, leaving a kiss on the tip of his nose before she stands back up and shoots a wink his way before she leaves to most likely yell at Jean to get off her case. The _“I’ll be back,”_ echoing in his head, repeating again and again as the voice that replaces the uglier voices from before.

Then second, it’s the comforting thought that later he’ll have to fight for the world again and perhaps _against_ it, but now, in this moment of rest—he’ll just have to settle with the thought that he’ll always have someone who means more than the universe to call his. Truly, there's no one else in the entire universe he wants to experience this kind of high of life with, other than her--because she would always be his definition of being _more_ than enough. 

(As not just someone, or something that is fleeting, but as someone who means to be his love—and eternity.)

-


	8. Broken Seashells & Dreams Made Whole | (Eren)

Like watching the push and the pull of the waves from your spot in the shore.

A little piece of earth, forever yours, and you’re forever safe. Eren feels like this. He’s never felt like the outsider that peered into situations he _wanted_ to be a part of, but rather he feels like he’s in place. It’s not as much as realizing that the sky is blue, the breeze is right, and the waves aren’t angry where it makes things feel like it’s enough.

Rather, in the moment, he’s okay.

He is anything, and everything, at once.

Toes in the sand, and he’s warm. The sun’s in the sky, and in his eyes are then hues of not just the ocean, but the skies too. Jenna’s always told him that perhaps he carried more than just this world within them—a silly comment made in passing, if anything, but sometimes even he admits to himself that he entertains the thought.

Like the nagging feeling that never left him: telling him that he was _someone,_ from _somewhere_ before.

The whispers carried by the breeze is familiar. The sting the wind leaves as kisses on his cheek feeling just the same. There was a sense of home always found in the rush: of the wind, the rise, the very high, then the fall. From leaping to free-falling to soaring, then diving, he thinks there are memories only his soul remembers.

(Does he want to even remember?)

Eren thinks that perhaps he doesn’t.

He doesn’t remember much, but he does recall the sea. The sea that had always been the physical manifestation of the possibility that you can be _anything_ and _everything_ all at once. The waves on one ocean could be calm, while on another they would rage. The current would flow this way on the east, while it would flow that way to the west. The same waters carried by the same breeze, where the both of them have been as old as time. Eren thinks to himself that perhaps there are stories whispered into the breeze and carried across the seas, towards open ears that probably wouldn’t understand the language, but still be able to decipher the emotion all the same.

If he were to be truthful to himself, he hopes that that’s the case for Jenna.

For years she really has been both his anything and everything.

In their youth, she was the seat beside his in class. He distinctly recalls comparing the difference between hazel against the sun, then hazel turning into espresso against the dim corner of the shaded areas of the room. She used to squint—something he thought was just _glaring_ at the start—before she got her first pair of glasses a little over a month later, and ever since, she was all smiles.

Eren could distinctly recall he never did say much around her—at the start at least, but he supposes that deciding on the right words to say was never really an easy thought process for him.

When it came to people, to observe was the first step. To make a mental note regarding his opinion about them was the next, then finally, speaking to them and perhaps initiating a friendship was the last.

In his youth, even though Eren had no trouble in being the first to initiate conversation and let his presence always be known, his tongue seemed to always be tied in strange looking knots around Jenna. He knew that he could just _talk_ to her, because her energy had always been more leaning towards the inviting side, but as soon as he would open his mouth and try to force out a conversation—a _hello_ was as far as he’d be taken.

But then again, the more he ponders about those memories now—a hello was also a start.

It was _slow,_ but a start was a start. The first step counted as much as the three hundredth taken despite the journey seeming like it would last up to a million.

His crush for Jenna started with a tiny step, a curious glance sent her way, and shy smiles whenever she’d give him even just the crumbs of her day that looked like her sweet goodmornings right before class started.

In elementary, it was crayons and coloring a little outside the lines. Bento boxes with the onigiri balls shaped like rilakkuma bears and the kind of chocolate bar he noticed she preferred over the others.

When Eren thinks about how his elementary aged self handled the kaleidoscope of emotions that came with the one sided pining stages of crushing, he could only roll his eyes at the way he used to dodge everything _but_ trying to keep a conversation going.

Little Eren would slide the chocolate bars on her side of the desk, and leave juice boxes on the cubby he knew she always hung her bag in before the bell rang. When Jenna would forget her glasses or find that she can’t really be bothered to wear them, he’d write his notes on the side of his pad just a little larger so that she can just look at the notes from his side instead of trying to squint at the board.

Love was a word that was reserved for summer vacations and his mom and dad. Baseball with his older brother Zeke during the weekends he’d come over, and collecting seashells by the beach every time they would take a family trip to the coastal town he could never shake the feeling of déjà vu off of.

-

So perhaps love, was the word that eventually came to be redefined when he found himself in high school.

Life was easy, but the factors he deemed as love stayed the same.

His mother and father was love. Watching Jenna squint towards the board only to poke fun at her to which she’d always bite back with something that shut him up with was also something akin to love. Along the years, he’d moved on from leaving boxes of juice by her locker and sliding chocolate bars without letting the credit be known. But if he were to retell the story honestly, it had been Jenna who one day, took a bite out of the fifth chocolate bar he _thought_ he slid secretly on her side of the desk, right before turning to face him and telling him her thanks.

“For?” he asked, and Eren snickers half in embarrassment and half in amusement when he remembers the way his voice seemed to crack at even _just_ a conversation with her. The shy boy phase most people talked about that would always render even the loudest speechless had some truth after all.

And because he had as much pride as the next person—ironically enough, the next person being _Jenna,_ who had a habit of priding herself for the many things she was more than efficient at—Eren could only purse his lips as he shook his head, whipping it to the side as he muttered out his _barely_ convincing “no.”

It didn’t do much in terms of aiding his reputation as the _bravo_ man every highschool boy tries to present themselves as in front of their crush. If anything, Eren only looked half convincing at best— _if_ Jenna had felt lenient enough to spare his already bruising ego that day.

Only she _didn’t._ (Something that Armin, along with the rest of their mutual friends still snicker about up to this day. It’s a good story to reminisce over; not so much for Eren, but it served as entertainment enough for the rest of the group.)

What Jenna did was only cross one leg over the other, turn her chair so that she could shift and lean _close_ towards him—to which the scarlet that _instantly_ bloomed across his cheeks betrayed him for—for the sake of looking at him straight in the eye.

“You’re not slick,” she had said, and the adult Eren of this day could only facepalm at the way his past self seemed to be _genuinely_ surprised at the fact that _wow,_ _after **consistently** leaving chocolates and juice boxes around the places she frequented the most for more than **ten years** was **obvious?**_

“Thanks for the daily snacks though,” she laughed anyway, and the pitter patter that burst across Eren’s heart in the form of heartbeats only slammed the final nail in the coffin that _shit,_ it’s Jenna who was the definition of love then. (And now—he thinks, jumping to the present as he looks at her from the distance.)

There was a lot of things that remained the same, he realized then.

One was his love for anything and everything sunshine and skies that was as intense from when he was a child, up until now. At nine, he secretly loved the way Jenna would beam at the teacher when she’d get an answer to a question right, and years later—Eren realized that he still did.

He loved sitting next to her and the small talk they would have in between classes or activities. He still loved blue ink over jet black, but because Jenna preferred blank ink on her pen, he would always still keep a spare in his bag just in case she needed one.

Highschool Eren still liked rilakkuma shaped onigiris and melon bread enough to call even _that_ love, and the seashells by the beach were that too. Along the years he’d eventually began to take at least one back home to add to his collection. Though it was notable that the shells he’d always take as souvenir always had some kind of flaw.

It was both a crack along the outer end, a piece on the corner chipping off, or completely even chipped off in some cases, and that was that. Armin often voiced out his curiosity asking as for _why_ Eren chose the broken out of all the other perfect ones he could have taken home, but he’d only ever shrug his shoulders at best.

He supposes there _could_ be a metaphor behind it. He could say that there’s something about the broken that calls to him, or something along the lines of what a poet would say, but there really wasn’t.

Maybe it’s a connection from a past life, or a memory that even his current consciousness hasn’t let go of yet, but there was something about the broken that felt familiar. Like looking into a mirror and noticing the cracks that don’t hurt, but never really faded staring right back at him. Jenna often told him— _in the present, at least_ —that it always looked as if there was a story within his eyes that hasn’t been found, but he knows that whatever it is, it’s done its purpose, lived its tale, and was completed.

The sins he may have carried in a life other than this may have not been forgiven, but Eren supposes they’re not for him to answer to.

He’s far from what a perfect person would be, and kindness had always been a word that sounded more like a farfetched thought than a tangible _something_ readily available right in his grasp.

He supposes that there would always be more than just a _couple_ of metaphors that even the next person would be able to unearth from the little things in his life, but life just had a tendency of having multiple faces. One proof of the ever swirling constant that was _change_ was his constant redefinition of love. The root of love is what always stayed, but along the years they did differ.

But still, it’s undeniable that the changes were still some of the most beautiful he’d ever come across.

-

Just like now.

He loved beaches and the ocean when he was young because collecting the broken seashells felt like it gave him purpose. He loved watching the waves; chasing it back out into the sea only to run as far as he could, as fast as his legs could carry him back in the shore when the tide he chased out would come back. He loved the way the surface glimmered when the sun was at its peak, and how warm the waters near the shores of home would always feel to the touch.

Eren thinks to himself that for as long as he touched the waves of the sea that felt as if it was as infinite as even the skies—he would always carry a little slice of another shore of a world foreign to him.

That was the constant that kept him grounded, and always centered in the silver linings found in the present. Often, he’d developed the habit of overthinking what love could mean—or rather, what it’s _supposed_ to mean.

Eren realizes that he’s finally at an age where he should start thinking of things a little differently, and looking at those same factors from a different point of view than what he was initially used to. According to all the books he’s read, as well as the stories he’s heard, love was _supposed_ to be the one thing in the mundane that swept you off your feet.

He knew Jenna was _it_ for him.

In the moment, he watches her from across the shore, waist deep in the water with Sasha and Jean, splashing waves on eachother as if they’re ten again. In a way, he could understand it. Sasha had always been a kid at heart, something that carried over to how she is in the present. She smiled at the little bits and pieces of what life had to offer—magnifying the details and remembering that they really only mean as much as you allow for them to. Jean, on the other hand, seemed as is from almost ten years ago up until now.

Eren snorts at the sight of Jenna nearly knocking him over when she rams her shoulder against his. It was a comical sight, if anything; to see a man well over six feet tall tower over someone petite like Jenna nearly be knocked over in waters not even waist level considering his significantly taller height than the other two.

Then there was Jenna.

Her glasses are folded on top of her bag that she kept in a neat pile, right beside him, entrusting the security of her belongings for the time being she’d be in the water. He smiles at the familiar pair of specs, noticing the scratch by the corner that Jenna always commented needed fixing, but forgot about it at the very last minute anyway.

She was also a constant who stayed; familiar despite the little changes time always brings forth with a person, because that’s what _growth_ is.

Eren knows she still prefers jet blank ink over navy blue, and that she readies herself right before merging into the interstate. She still wears her glasses because she needs them to read menus from a far, and the fact that she says her fast food orders a certain way. The kind of chocolate bar she’s always liked when she was just a kid is still the same, so when he gets the time, he always tries to slip in a couple bars in her car if she’s dropping him off or at least one in her work bag if she isn’t looking.

She finds out anyway, and often chastises him for it especially if she’s been watching her sugar intake as of late, but Eren knows it won’t take long until he hears the familiar crinkle of plastic right after as she rips it open and takes a bite.

She’s still so, _so_ incredibly beautiful against the light, and even if the hazel of her eyes are of the same hue, when he looks into them and loses himself, he sees a multitude of different stories he knows come from the experience she’s got together along the years.

Stories, so intricate, he’s always more than glad to lose himself in. Over and over again, he knows he would never get tired of listening to her talk. She could rage at the world, talk about what love could be, or simply just talk about how that cloud looks like this while that cloud looks like that—and he would still be captivated.

(Because love was like that.)

Eren Jaeger carries confidence like it’s his second skin and that was his growth, but the constant that was the root to his everything was the fact that scarlet would _never_ fail to bloom across his cheeks when Jenna would smile at him.

-

And it’s the kind of smile where Eren knows it’s _just_ for him too.

It’s five forty five, and the sun’s flashing its final burst of golden before the skies would darken into the signature shades of marmalade the sunset would always offer. Jenna and Eren are sat on the sand, shoulder to shoulder, where the waves that come and lap at their feet feel more warm and welcome than cold.

(This was another constant that stayed, he thinks. The warmth of the waters from the ocean was like how it always was, and for that, he smiles.)

Jenna’s smiling too, for a reason he secretly wishes he’s a part of, and the question forms itself at the very tips of his tongue when she turns to look at him.

“You seem happy,” she says, and Eren shrugs, laughing softly.

“I mean I guess I am.”

“Beach days always made you happy,” she notes with a nostalgic kind of tone laced around her words. Eren chuckles at that, his heart blooming none the less at the realization that for her to remember bits and pieces about him, he too must be a sort of constant in _her_ life.

“Maybe I just saw Jean do weird shit earlier and that’s why I’m in a good mood,” he laughs, looking towards the line across the horizon. It’s a comforting sight too. If infinity had a face, perhaps it would look something like that.

Jenna smirks, nudging his shoulder along with her chuckle. “So you’re saying that Jean’s the reason why you’re happy today?”

Eren rolls his eyes, exhaling another half hearted laugh instead of responding. A couple minutes of just silence pass, before Eren breaks the makeshift silence with a question.

“What makes you happy?” he asks, turning to face Jenna, the genuine curiosity reflected in his eyes.

She ponders over his question for a while. The waves continue to _woosh,_ creating the little sound that they always do when they crash against the sand, and Jean and Sasha’s hollers in the background are dulled with the wind to the point where neither Eren nor Jenna can really make out what they’re saying. Still, it’s a welcome noise—a familiar one rather, so Jenna lets it be.

(She lets a lot of things just _be,_ but she supposes that’s where the serendipity of life just kicks in.)

She thinks to herself some more, watching the questions he doesn’t ask—yet, along with the stories Eren hasn’t shared— _yet—_ before she smiles to herself and exhales, “A lot of things.”

“I can give you a _really_ deep answer right now and be super poetic, but that requires too much thinking. I don’t think happiness is supposed to be thought out like that,” she hums, shrugging her shoulders half heartedly.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you’re supposed to just realize it in the moment,” she tells him, voice light, as she draws her knees to her chest, resting the tip of her chin against it as she shifts her body to look at Eren who watches her like she holds the truth to the universe itself.

He stays quiet, an indication for his confusion she assumes, so she takes it as an initiative to elaborate further. “Happiness is not spending even 3 seconds on the thought and just saying it exactly as it comes to you.”

“So say something,” Eren prompts.

“I’m happy when I build sandcastles.”

“Sandcastles?” he asks.

“Sandcastles,” Jenna nods with a laugh, before she lightly whacks Eren on the arm when he begins to laugh in turn.

“Oi,” she whines. “Stop laughing! I know you still collect broken seashells.”

“Because they make me happy!” he retaliates with an even louder laugh.

“Why?” she challenges, a tease in her tone.

He shrugs. “Just because they do.”

“A lot of stuff about life works like that you know,” Jenna tells him, a smile on her face. There’s a bit of wisdom laced with her words, but she says it as if it’s a given fact that’s common knowledge at this point.

(Perhaps it is.)

“Like love?” Eren challenges.

“Love too,” she smiles. “You’re about to say you love me aren’t you?” she teases.

“You know I always do.”

“Why?”

“Because building sandcastles make you happy and seeing that makes me happy too.” Eren smiles, then turns to her to her, adding, “I know you love me too.”

“Of course I do,” Jenna responds, honest.

“Why?” Eren asks, throwing the question right back at her.

“Because,” she smiles. “You’re the only person who picks the broken seashells over the perfect ones.”


End file.
